How To Downsize and Organize Your Kitchen

Check out all of Lea Schneider's helpful home and kitchen columns at Organizing Kitchens, Pantries, Menus and Meals.

Moving to a smaller kitchen can be a large task. Sometimes, just looking at the quantities of kitchen cabinets, appliances, and dishes will make you think downsizing isn’t possible.  

It is quite possible to move to a smaller home and a small kitchen and still have everything you need. I speak from experience. I’ve downsized my own home, relative’s homes and, as a professional organizer, those of my client’s. In this economy, it isn’t just seniors moving into senior communities that downsize, so you are in good company.

Begin with Encouragement:

At some point in your life, you most likely lived in a smaller space. Nearly all of us spent time in a dorm room, a shared apartment, a newlywed bungalow, or a tiny starter home.

Since you are reading this, it’s a good guess you didn’t starve during those years. You managed just fine in less space and with less kitchen gadgets and you can do so now.
 

Get Real with your Sorting:

Ask yourself if you need it:

• Ask yourself if you need some of it but not all of it.
  
  For example, let’s say you have 8 coffee cups with your dish set, 4 favorite mugs with nice fat handles, several souvenir mugs, and other mugs from mysterious origins. When was the last time you served coffee to 32 people? Pare it down!
   

• Don’t be afraid to break sets.
  
  Used dishes have little resale value. You won’t lose much, if anything at all, if you keep half of a set and sell or donate half of a set. Someone else with a tiny space will be happy to have half.
  
  So if you have 24 drinking glasses in your set, with 12 tumblers and 12 shorter glasses, then keep half of each. If you have a dish set with service for 12 or for 8 people, then keep only service for 6 or for 4 people. Indeed, if you are like me and never use the cups that came with the dishes, then let those cups go.
   

• Keep only one way to cook something.
  
  Think of all the ways someone can cook a hotdog. You could pan grill it, boil it, microwave it, put it on the George Foreman, use the outdoor barbeque, and/or broil it or stick it on a coat hanger in a fire. So why would you need a hotdog cooker?
  
  You don’t need a both a 4-cup and an 8-cup coffee maker. You don’t need both an electric skillet, a 20-inch cook top skillet, and a wok.
   

• Check your decisions.
  
  Ask yourself, “If I did not own this, what would I use instead?”  If you can’t think of anything, keep it. If you can not come up with a reason, let it go!
   

• Keep only one.
  
  Many common kitchen items often have duplicates. Purge down to one colander, one set of measuring cups, one spatula, one set of tongs, and so forth.
  
   

Make Good Use of Space Available:

You will need every inch of space in a small kitchen. Below are some great ideas for organizing your kitchen storage spaces:
 

Use plate stackers

You’ll be able to use all of the cabinet space by stacking plates, bowls, cups, and canned goods on stackers.

Use turntables

You can get a lot of bottles and spices into one cabinet with these turntables.

Use the inside of cabinet doors

Add organizing products to the inside of your cabinet doors. Some common ones are designed to hold foil, wraps, hand towels, and/or pot lids. Add hooks inside of doors for measuring cups or anything with a loop or hole for hanging.

Add pullout baskets

Baskets installed in lower cabinets allow you to use every inch of space.

Even the use of a plastic tub that you can slide out is helpful.

Use a ladder

In a big kitchen, we put seldom used things on top shelves. In a small kitchen, you’ve let go of seldom used things and everything you have is used.

This means you’ll need access to top cabinets. A one-inch wide step ladder can slide in between the wall and refrigerator.

Use space in the laundry room

In a small home, laundry facilities are often in an adjacent closet.

Use the wall space next to the washer for hooks to hold items like aprons, barbecue tools and other odd items.