Tag Archives: pantry

Top Five Kitchen Organizing Products

Posted on June 22, 2012 by DIY Del Ray | 1 Comment

After organizing our linen closets and craft storage, we’re moving on to kitchens. Laine Hardman from Tidy Up Professional Organization offers some great ideas and insider tips to help you save space, money, and aggravation.

We all spend a lot of time in our kitchens – preparing meals, packing lunches, baking for bake sales. So, having an organized kitchen can truly improve your daily life. Getting organized takes a little work up front. But, with a little know-how and the right products, you can have that organized kitchen you’ve always wanted. Here are my top five favorite kitchen organizing products to help you tidy up your kitchen.

1. Clear Drawer Organizers

Messy kitchen drawers can only lead to frustration and time lost looking for that favorite wooden spoon. To solve this, first, remove everything from the drawer. Only keep the items that you use often. Then, measure the entire drawer: depth, width, and height before shopping for products. (If a drawer organizer is too tall, you won’t be able to close the drawer – been there, done that.)

Purchase clear drawer organizers that will fit the items that you are keeping and your drawer. The photos below show a drawer before and after tidying up. It took about 10 minutes of sorting, 10 -15 minutes of shopping, and about $25 in product cost.

Insider’s Tip: If you are a highly visual person, cut out a piece of newspaper to match the size of your drawer. Bring this, along with the height of the drawer, with you when shopping. Place the newspaper on the floor of the store and arrange drawer organizers on top of it to help you visualize what the drawer will look like.

Divided drawer organizers aren’t just for pull-out drawers. One Mom uses two of them side by side in her pantry to hold granola bars. She stores full boxes of the bars behind them. The kids can easily help themselves and she can tell at a glance if she is running low on any of their favorite snacks.

Insider’s Tip: If you are looking for tall drawer organizers, check the bathroom section of the store. Often, taller organizers that are designed for hairbrushes are displayed there.

2. Lazy Susans

Lazy Susans are inexpensive way to keep lots of items at your fingertips in a small amount of space. Some are tiered, making it easier to reach the items in the center. Consider using them for spices, vitamins, and cleaning supplies under the sink.

Insider’s Tip: When shopping remove the lazy susan from the packaging and give it a spin. If it doesn’t spin smoothly in the store, it won’t spin smoothly at home. (Again, been there, done that!)

3. Cupboard Shelves

A cupboard shelf can literally double the usable space of your cabinet. The possibilities here are endless. They can be used for plates, food, cups, mugs, bowls, etc. They eliminate the need for stacking similar items, which often causes toppling and clutter. And they are available in tiered, corner, and expandable designs to fit all your needs. Measure the area where you’ll be putting the shelves to ensure a good fit.

Undershelf baskets also serve this purpose. Store whatever works for you there. One Mom I know stores her tea and reusable napkins in hers.

Insider’s Tip: If the height of the cabinet allows for it, place a lazy susan on top of a cupboard shelf. This is a great idea for under the sink. All your cleaning supplies can go on top and you can store trash bags or sponges underneath.

4. Tiered Shelf-Organizer

Consider a tiered shelf-organizer for your canned goods and spices. This allows you to see what you have and avoid unnecessary purchases. And remember a three-tiered unit allows for four levels of storage because you can store items in front of the unit, too. Some shelf-organizers are expandable, allowing you to make it as wide as you’d like. Again, measure the width, depth, and height of your cabinet before shopping.

Insider’s Tip: After purchasing and installing a kitchen organizing product, leave the labels on and keep the receipts. Live with it for a while. If you like it, remove the labels and keep it. If it doesn’t work for you, return it!

5. Rollout Cabinet Drawers

Rollout drawers are an easy way to make use of the back of deep cabinets. Custom rollouts can be pricey so consider non-custom rollouts that you install yourself. Measure the cabinet before shopping. You most likely won’t find a perfect fit. But the side of the rollout doesn’t have to be wasted space. Cereal can be stored there in a food cabinet or baking sheets can slide right into that spot in your pots and pans cabinet. No more stale, opened boxes of graham crackers lost in the back of the dark cabinet.

Insider’s Tip: Check the clearance rack of organizing stores. I found two rollout cabinet drawers there that were display units. They work just fine and saved me a good deal of money.

Everyone has different ideas on how to tidy up their kitchen! The most important thing to remember is: Do what works for you! (And measure before you go shopping!)

Do you have a favorite space-saving tool? Share in the comments.

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Posted in Small-Space Solutions

Tagged kitchen, organizing, pantry, storage

A Quick and Easy Change for the Perfect Storage Solution

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Katie | Leave a comment

I’m a perpetual room reorganizer. To ensure I have a variety of room arrangement options, I tend to buy furniture that can serve multiple purposes, and therefore work in almost every room.

Take this storage cabinet for example. I believe it is technically for clothes — open those doors and there are three drawers inside — but I purchased it for the living room to hold the TV and for added storage. I probably won’t ever use it in a bedroom but you never know.

When I originally bought the cabinet, I removed the drawers inside and used the open space for toys. The drawers were heavy and bulky and difficult to manage. As time went on, I realized I needed more food storage (our tiny kitchen doesn’t have a pantry) so I put the toys in the basement and moved bulk food and canned goods into the cabinet.

Last week, we decided we wanted to be able to watch movies in the living room so we purchased a dirt cheap DVD player. I’ve got issues with clutter and visible electrical cords and didn’t want the DVD player (as tiny as it was) sitting on top of the cabinet. My DIY-phobic husband actually made the suggestion to store the DVD player inside the cabinet and I jumped at the chance to work on a project.

Without drawers, there was some wasted space in the cabinet that was just calling for a shelf. The shelf could hold the DVD player and still leave plenty of room for food storage below. I measured the length of the cabinet, marked a piece of scrap wood, then used a jigsaw to cut the wood.

The wood shelf fit perfectly on the grooves for the old drawers. We also drilled a hole in the back for the electrical cords.

Now everything fits nice and neatly inside the cabinet. The DVD player is so small, there’s room on the top shelf for a few boxes of spaghetti and a couple of bottles of wine.

Who knows where this cabinet will be in six months or if it will be assigned an entirely different purpose, but for now this electronics/wine/dried goods storage piece is doing its job just fine. And if you’re wondering about the drawers, I still have them. They are hiding under the couch keeping other household stuff organized and out of sight.

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Posted in Arts & Crafts, Small-Space Solutions

Tagged electronics, food, pantry, storage, wood

Mason Jars and Open Shelving: Pantry Storage at a Glance

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Leslie | 9 Comments

Rebecca Underly is the owner of Del Ray Cakery, a home-based business that specializes in cake pops, decorative and wedding cakes, and other sweet treats. A mother of two young children as well, she uses her kitchen for her business and as the center of her family life.

It’s a wonder that every surface isn’t covered in thin layer of sprinkles, flour, goldfish crackers and pretzels. Some days this may be the case, but Rebecca has found a way to use dozens and dozens of mason jars to manage her baking inventory and keep life running smoothly in the snack department as well.

Behold her open pantry, a floor-to-ceiling set of neatly arranged mason jars.

In addition to her Del Ray Cakery business, Rebecca is also a recipe developer and food writer, which is why she says she has ”so many different kinds of things in those jars.”

Rebecca has a method for organizing the mason jar pantry:

She marks the purchase dates of the dry good on the tops of jars containing bulk items.
She follows a “first in, first out” motto. The newer items go in back so that the family will use up previously purchased items first. Rebecca likes that she lets nothing sit unused and forgotten.
She keeps the sweet treats, like M&Ms and cookies, on the highest shelf to keep little people from helping themselves.
The next shelf down has items she doesn’t use every day like dried beans, lentils, various grains, nuts and dried fruits.
The next two shelves down have the jars with items the family uses almost every day like crackers, more dried fruits and veggies, pasta, protein powder, whey, oatmeal, ground flours for waffles and pancakes, and rice.

“I basically love it for its visual recognition and easy access,” she says. “I always know what I have just by looking. Nothing gets lost in the deep cabinet or pantry.”

Rebecca’s go-to resources for mason jars:
Shoppers Food Warehouse
Target
Hollin Hall Variety Store
Craigslist and Freecycle

Rebecca’s floor-to-ceiling open shelving is one of the most attractive pantry storage solutions we’ve seen yet. And even if you don’t have enough room in your kitchen for a full pantry, here are a few examples of how local residents have embraced the open shelving concept.