Regardless of how elegant or luxurious a kitchen may be, it must also be functional. One of the keys to creating a functional kitchen is organization. There’s nothing worse than having to dig through cabinets to find the right size casserole dish or endlessly search the cutlery drawer for a second chopstick to make your pair complete. While you could spend hours in the IKEA Kitchen Storage department racking up a hefty bill, there are some shortcuts you can take to restore organization, order, and function to a kitchen with ease.
6 Kitchen Hacks for a More Functional Kitchen
- Put Cabinet Doors to Work
The interior side of cabinet doors are a wasted space for storage in most homes. These convenient areas can be used to store spices, measuring cups, and similar smaller objects that traditionally take up valuable space in drawers or cabinets.
- Desk Organizers for Storing Bakeware
A common desk organizer which keeps notebooks and folders separate can also work great for kitchen storage. The main utility that the desk organizer brings is the ability to store things vertically instead of horizontally including cookie sheets, cutting boards, or cooling racks which would otherwise be hard to locate in storage.
- Magazine Racks For Freezer Organization
Along with drawers under countertops, perhaps the most disorganized area of the kitchen is the freezer. Items can get stacked on top of each other and banished to the back of the freezer which results in waste of food and a lack of storage. Using simple magazine racks provides slotted storage for items such as vegetables, pizza rolls, and similar frozen food in an easy to access way.
- Open the Faux Counter Drawer
Many kitchen designs feature the obligatory faux drawer which sits in front of the sink spot. While there isn’t a lot of room between the drawer and the sink, it can be hinged to open down instead of out serving as a perfect spot to set sponges, dish rags, and other kitchen cleaning utensils.
- Refrigerator Lazy Susan
Install a rotating lazy Susan in your refrigerator for better access to bottles and to avoid the 10-year container of sour cream that was just about ready to sprout legs and walk away.
- Magnets Create Space
Something useful for creating kitchen space is magnets. Whether it be for utensils, cooking sheets, spices, or a recipe Rolodex among other things being creative with magnets can really organize the kitchen.
- Kitchen Message Boards – Not Just for TV Families
They are generally a staple in sitcom kitchens but message boards really do help organize a kitchen. They can be used to plan upcoming menus, leave information for who will and won’t be around for supper, make grocery lists and much more. Even in the age of texts and emails hard copy on the kitchen wall serves an incredibly great purpose. Along those same technological lines, some people convert old tablets into ‘kitchen only’ devices, useful for storing recipes or cooking new menu items.
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