Does anyone have a good way to organize kitchen cupboards and pantry?

Question

My parents are moving into their new home and I am trying to help my mother organize her kitchen.
She has a walk in pantry, two plastic lazy suzan cupboards a tall cupboard with sliding shelves and many regular cupboards along with the slide cupboards under the counter top. She is having a hard time deciding what to put where. She has never had a lot of space until now. They live in the country so she stockpiles in case of bad weather. So we are putting extras on shelves in the basement. Any help on organizing the kitchen cupboards would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you! :)

Answer 1

IKEA has amazing organization tools, as does The Container Store, like drawer dividers and stackers for the lazy susan cupboards to maximize space. On the practical side, just make sure that everything used most frequently is on eye-level. Stockpiled extras might be able to be kept upstairs if you invest in a few pertinent organizational pieces. There are a few places online that will give you an in-home evaluation/assessment for free.

Answer 2

I LOVE working in an organized kitchen and I have spent years perfecting my own spaces. I have a pretty small kitchen but still have a LOT of tips for any size or shaped area.

First thing to encourage with your mom is to declutter all her spaces before moving in. Don't move things that you don't love, need, and rely on. Another tip, don't pack things according to where they are in the old house, take the time on the front end to pack boxes the way they will be stored in the new house. This will make unpacking easier. These are whole house tips.

Decluttering in the kitchen is particularly important because if your mom is like most people, she has accumulated many things that she doesn't really need. There are so many infomercials, catalogs, and stores for every budget that are dedicated to gizmos in the kitchen. If your mom is fallen for any of these promises, get her to really think about how much stuff she has and whether or not the items are what they are cracked up to be. A good principle about keeping gadgets:

Used so frequently and are so versatile that they are worth the space they take up. Things like stand mixers, blenders, food processors.

So perfect at what it does that even if you only use it occasionally, it is worth the space taken. Things like toasters, coffee makers, popcorn poppers.

So small that it doesn't matter if you keep it. Things like cherry pitters, apple corers, etc. Careful on this rule that you don't have so many that in total, you take up a lot of space. If there is an out of the way drawer in the kitchen and it isn't spoken for, you can dedicate that space for anything like this and weed it out when it gets too full...just know that often times that drawer will go completely untouched for months.

Some things to consider re: appliances are that you can often dispense with them if you prepare the food another way. Popcorn can be popped in a microwave, coffee can be brewed with a small french press or a mini drip machine, toast can be prepared in a skillet or in a toaster oven that is more versatile. Electric can openers can be replaced with hand held, electric jar openers can be replaced with a rubber gripper, spin and peel devices for apples and potatos can be replaced with a good handheld peeler or a paring knife as well. Mini-choppers, grinders, etc can be replaced with a food processor that is bigger but again more versatile. Sometimes it is just easier to do things the hard way.

Decluttering further, your mom may have multiples of things that she can pare down to less, especially if she is empty nesting. Things like pots and pans, utensils, serving and storage pieces. Related, check the tupperware situation. Get rid of anything with lids missing, anything that is odd shaped or doesn't match the rest, or anything that is truly trash like butter tubs and cool whip bowls. Pare down to a set of stuff that stores easily together. There is a system out there with different sized nesting containers and same sized lids for all of them, they stack in a swivel stand and take up about as much space as a set of plates. Very nice indeed and probably plenty of storage for her needs.

Last declutter tip is to keep pieces that are versatile rather than single use. For instance, if you have a pretty dutch oven, you can cook on the stove top, oven, serve in it, lid on and store without batting an eye. Same with using double duty bowls. A pretty glass mixing bowl can hold a salad, a side or a soup, punch, and can be used for whipping up cookie dough or mixing meatloaf. A bundt cake pan can be used for jello or as an interesting serving piece for a salad, cake, monkey bread, sticky buns, or ice rings for the punch bowl. Silicone and wooden spatulas can be used for any type of pan without damaging the surface or the spatula.

After decluttering is done, make a sketch of the layout of the new kitchen. As you plan the move, leave room in your space for where things should go, using pencil to configure things until it is just right.

In your sketch, note the work triangle. The points of the triangle are the major appliances: sink, stove, fridge. The lines of the triangle are the traffic patterns. Both the lines and the points have certain tasks that are common to those areas and things should be stored according to where they are used. You can do your own research on the work triangle and what goes where. Also note that the work triangle can be multiplied with separate oven and range, second sinks, and cold storage drawers...and that there are accessories that go nearby the cornerstone appliances. Sink usually has a neighboring dishwasher and often this is where the garbage is located. Stove usually has an oven, microwave. Fridge may have a companion freezer nearby and check the direction of the swing of the door so it is easiest to use.

Some additional things to consider regarding the work triangle:

The traffic pattern for getting food into the house. For example you want a lot of food storage right there by the garage door if you can do it so groceries are easy to put away.

The traffic pattern for moving food out of the kitchen and into the dining room. So entertaining pieces like table linens, candles, as well as napkins etc are handy on their way to, or in, the dining room.

The traffic pattern for people popping into the kitchen while the main cook is in there. You want to set up the kitchen so that people coming in to snack, get a drink, use the phone, surf the web, etc are still welcome there but stay out of the cook's way.

The traffic patterns for a second or group of cooks working at the same time. This is where things can get hairy. If needed, you can disperse gear to different areas according to tasks done in that area, instead of having one place for all the knives, all the spices, all the gadgets, etc.

You can set up "kits" for specific tasks that are done a LOT. Perfect example, and you may have your own situation, is baking cookies. If you bake a lot of cookies, you can pull gear from all areas of the kitchen and keep that stuff together. Start with a couple cookie sheets. Fill a plastic pocket folder with fav recipes on cards, each in a plastic bag for protection and easy use. Put it in the cookie sheets. Stack on top of that a cooling rack, on top of that rests the rolling pin, add two nesting mixing bowls next to that, and fill the bowls with a set of measuring cups and spoons, a wooden spoon, a whisk, and a rubber spatula, a cookie scooper, the vanilla and other extracts, cinnamon and other spices, a small amount of baking soda and powder, etc. Next to the cookie sheets you can store your at hand supplies of flour, sugars, chips, nuts and other add-ins in a dishpan or other bin that grabs easily. Then when you bake cookies, you take out your kit, your ingredient bin, and your refrigerated items and off you go.

Moving on to all the space in the kitchen, there is prime real estate, a little harder, and tucked away.

Prime real estate is counter tops, fronts of cabinets, eye level, single motion access (no moving one thing to get to what you need) and for food tasks, most of the prime real estate is INSIDE the work triangle. This is where you want things that are reached for again and again, no doubt where they belong, and they are quick to get out and use. Things in your prime real estate would be: at hand food supplies, beverages, and snacks for the coming week. Favorite spices. Enough pans, dishes, serving pieces, and tupperware for an average day with average number of eaters. Fav mixing bowls, whisks, knives, etc. Quick clean products and dish soap, a few towels, pot holders and rags.

Paring down your work triangle to the hardest working, most frequently used items will make your everyday cooking tasks infinitely easier because there is no overflow there. Small at hand inventories, a little of everything, your fav pieces. This way, most of the time, everything is at your fingertips.

From there, the rest of the kitchen, that is, outside the work triangle, is for things you use less frequently, and depending on how often, it will be either easier or harder to get to. If you use something weekly or so, keep it in the front, on top, or at eye level. If you use something less frequently, keep it behind, underneath, or high up or down low to stoop or climb for it. If you use something only for potlucks, picnics, holidays, large groups, or whatever, you can go one better and get them in the garage or tucked away in the pantry.

OK pantry storage. This is where bulk items, major cleaning supplies, major food inventories, canisters, lesser used appliances, extra storage and serving pieces can be stored. If you have even a loosely followed menu plan you can go through the pantry once a week, pull ingredients for the week and move them into one cabinet of your prime real estate (in the triangle), refill at hand supplies in the work triangle, and be done with it...all the steps are removed from the cooking process ahead of time, no question where stuff is, the only back and forth is regarding the refrigerator. This is also a way to earmark ingredients that you will need so they don't get eaten before they are used (and you might have a basket or shelf, or drawer in the fridge that is off limits as well). In the pantry, it makes sense to store like with like as much as you can...cans, jars, pastas/rices, crackers, snacks, condiments, overflow dishes and little used but valuable appliances. etc. Use containers for small items, this will make drawer space out of shelf space and make those small items portable for use and putting away. Label edges of the shelves and bins and baskets and canisters with what belongs there. Use squared or rectangular shaped containers whenever possible so you maximize all the space taken instead of using rounded shapes where corners are lost. Cereal keepers make excellent canisters whether you store them in the main kitchen or in the pantry, you can pour or scoop from them, they are seethrough, they are tall and uniform sizes instead of the typical set of three with an odd shape you will never use. Use for cereals, beans, rice, potato flakes, oatmeal, pastas, flour, sugars, coffee, tea bags, etc. A last pantry tip is to make use of the back of the pantry door by hanging mop and broom there.

Last thing is to balance the function of the kitchen with other things. Kitchens are getting more and more multi-purpose these days and that's cool but the heart of the kitchen is mainly food prep. So if there is other stuff going on in there, like laundry, bill paying, and scheduling, phone calls, computer stuff, mud room, dining, homework, lounging and visiting with the cook, make sure that stuff doesn't interfere with the traffic pattern of the main cooking space.

I get so long winded sometimes. I hope this was worth the read.