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©2009 Professional Organizer -
Lea Schneider is the author of
Growing-Up Organized:
A Mom to Mom Guide available at
Amazon.com.
Lea provides
one-on-one organizing advice via phone and email through Organize Online
division at her company website,
Organize Right Now.
Her advice is featured
here at What's Cooking America in a monthly column. You may have read her
expert organizing ideas in Woman’s Day, Natural Health, College News, and
Better Homes and Gardens Kids’ Rooms magazines and newspapers. She is a member of the National Association of Professional
Organizers and the Association of Food Journalists.
Contact
Information:
Lea Schneider
Organize Right Now LLC
Member National Association of Professional Organizers
Pensacola, Florida
Website:
Organize Right Now
Tele: 1-850-477-2582
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Clear Out the Kitchen Clutter
Promising to clear out the clutter is a common New Year’s
resolution. In fact, getting organized is one of the top New Year’s
resolutions.
If
you’ve vowed to get organized this year, the kitchen is a great
place to start. It is so much simpler to declutter a kitchen than
anyplace else. When you ask yourself the basic questions of "Do I
love it, use it, or need it?" - the answers are quickly evident. Unlike
the clothes closet, you don’t need to try it on. And unlike the
attic, you are going to quickly know if you’ve been using that item
or not.
Once
you’ve sorted out the clutter by asking those key questions, tackle
the pantry by tossing out expired items.
Now
you are ready to implement some low-cost and easy ideas to keep your
kitchen organized. Here’s some ideas from a kitchen I just finished
organizing. These ideas should work for most everyone - and they
originated from some very common situations.
Baking Pans
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It’s
very common to have baking pans here and there. It is also very
common for them to be stacked in a frustrating pyramid so that you
have to do juggling to get one out. Using a rack, costing less than
$10, really makes organizing easy. These “bakeware” organizers
typically hold something as wide as a 9 x 11 casserole or many slim
items, such as a stack of cookie sheets or cutting boards.
Prepare for the Holidays - Head Back to Basics in Organizing
With the holidays fast approaching, you could probably use a
little help in making your kitchen tidy and getting it organized.
Getting organized in the kitchen means getting down to the basics.
Sliding Drawers
for Lower Cabinets
It's easy to update older cabinets
with the addition of drawers.
Cooking Tools
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In
this kitchen, cooking tools were spread out among three different
smaller drawers. This larger drawer, was a mish-mash of items.
Cooking meant opening and closing multiple drawers to find the tool
you need. Begin by cleaning your largest drawer. Move all the
cooking tools to that one drawer. Think of it as a one-stop shop for
your tools. As you organize, eliminate extras and donate them to a
good cause.
Whisk
those
gadgets into shape
Learn ideas for those hard-to-organize and unusually
shaped necessities.
Spices
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Spices sometimes work in a cabinet. Sometimes they don’t. Figure out
if they are working in your home by checking to see if you can get
to them easily. In this case, the stair-step organizers simply
didn’t work. Reaching for one thing in the back meant knocking over
three things in the front. It was like trying to play dominos!
Moving them all to a large drawer really made a big difference.
Some spicy ideas
Great ways to
organize your spice cabinet.
You couldn’t possibly be outdated. Could you?
You don't have 15-year-old spice -
or do you? Check it out here.
Under the Sink
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Is
your under the sink a wasteland of unused space? This small kitchen
really needed to use that space. We used another of the bakeware
organizers to hold cutting boards. Since you usually cut by the sink
to rinse of vegetables and fruits, this is a great convenient spot.
Placing the blender and parts in a slide out basket makes it easy to
use. Limiting cleaning products to those used in the kitchen helped
reclaim needed space. The others were moved to a utility closet.
Containing the products in a slide-out basket helps them find what
they need.
Desperate for Cluttered Kitchen Help
My friend’s cabinets are so jammed with things that I don’t even know where to begin and how to get her organized.
I am clueless for ideas on where to start in for her kitchen.
Hard-to-use Lower
Cabinets - Get ideas for maximizing your space
Maximize the space you have by making the best use of your
cabinets.
Junk Drawer
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It’s
probably not that unusual that clutter was in several places.
Really, it wasn’t clutter but useful items. They were just scattered
here and there. By adding dividers to this small unused drawer, it
became a very useful drawer. The drawer is located just under the
mail basket and the outlet with the phone chargers so having pen and
paper near-by is a must.
If
you made a resolution to get organized in your kitchen, why not
break the task down into small parts and just do one of these at a
time until you’ve made it around the kitchen?
Ten "Next To"
great kitchen organizing tips
Get organizing with this simple
method. Learn about the "next-to rule."
The
junk drawer holds everything but junk
An organized junk drawer is worth its weight!
Organize the things you need.
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