Bigger Than The Three Of Us

Whether you need kitchen drawer organization or a simple under-kitchen sink organizer, I’m giving you a bunch of kitchen organization ideas today.

I think we can all relate to the problem of having too much in our kitchen; whether that’s extra pots and pans or plastic cups that forever get lost in the back of the kitchen cabinets. Today, on the Your Home Story podcast, Suzannah and I are tackling a listener’s dilemma all about her kitchen organization issues.

Kitchen Organization Ideas

Organizing your kitchen cabinets can be a DIY project that really yields great results. Today, we are walking through common issues including what to do with hard-to-reach upper cabinets, the corner cabinet that’s hard to figure out, deep pantry shelves and even under the kitchen sink!

Listen below or find us on your favorite podcast app: iTunes, Stitcher, GooglePlay and Overcast

Suzannah and I opened the show today sharing our experiences with kitchen organization. She’s been lucky recently since she just finished her kitchen renovation and has new cabinets. She told us about organizing her small pantry and talked about some of the recommendations that she got from @themoderneditpdx on how to capitalize on storage efficiency.

I, on the other hand, have an older kitchen. It was interesting to hear that even though she has a new kitchen and I have an older kitchen, some of the keys to having an organized kitchen are the same.

Kitchen Organization DIY

Great bins to corral pantry goods are always a good idea.
A lazy susan to corral oils can’t be beat.
Save space by taking your dry goods out of the boxes to store.
Create less visual clutter by placing dry goods in glass containers.
Build a DIY spice rack like I did!
Install pull-out shelves to help reach those hard to reach cabinets! I absolutely love this feature in my kitchen. I shared all about this upgrade in my post on Easy Kitchen Organizing.

It was cool to hear that we both really liked those kitchen organization DIY ideas and had both thought about or used all of them in the past. Some of them made an appearance in the show later when we chatted about potential solutions to Kierra’s (the listener who wrote in) kitchen organization issues.

Here’s what she wrote in and said…

Hi! I’d love any and all help! I feels silly complaining about storage in a large kitchen but since the pantry is small and there are only 2 really small non bedroom closets in the whole house it’s really the only space I have for storage! I would love to put open shelves where the cupboard over the peninsula is since I can’t reach and it makes it so the lighting over it has to be short so the door clears it. The main problem with that being that my whole house is different fades of this old ugly contractor yellow beige and it’s open concept with tall ceilings and it’s not in the budget to repaint all 1100 square feet’s worth of continuous wall. The corner cupboards only really have stuff on the edge and the lazy Susan style thing doesn’t fit much. One of the corner uppers does have a lot of beautiful thrown ceramics that would be much happier displayed on the open shelves but are now just awkwardly stacked and a pain to dig through. The pots and pans and glass bakeware (I can’t pare down what I have either because I regularly bake for events) just kind-of stack aimlessly and it’s a balancing act to get anything out of there. The under sink isn’t any better as again all cleaning supplies have to go there. Thanks!

She attached the following pictures of her space.

We made quite a few recommendations during the show, but I’ll list a few below as well.

One of the recommendations was to think about what she’s storing on the upper shelves in her cabinets. If she can’t reach them, then maybe she needs to move the shelves around inside her cabinets and then place vases on the top shelves (or something that she doesn’t often get to).

I think we all struggle with stacking pots and pans on top of each other. Ultimately though, if each pot and pan (or lid or whatever) doesn’t have it’s own spot, then you’ll never have an organized space. So, pare down if you can. If you can’t pare down then you probably need to invest in a few items that will really help you stay organized.

Another dilemma that she had was what do do with all the things under the sink.

Under Kitchen Sink Organizer

I have struggled with the under kitchen sink organization as well. Suzannah and I both have trashcans in that area and it’s just a tight space. It doesn’t do anyone good to pile lots of products under there. Again, my advice for under the kitchen sink is to pare down. If you use it 2x per week, then keep it under the sink and, if not, create a utility closet somewhere else (laundry room or garage, maybe).

There are also stackable kitchen sink organizers that you can buy and use. I used to have one under my sink before I upgraded my sink. It helped because it allowed me to have a shelf plus a pull-out drawer on one side of the cabinet.