Dont you love that great feeling you get when things are organised and neat? Although I am an almost 8 year veteran of my interior design career, I am a right brained creative, so organisation does not come naturally to me. I am doing this reorganisation with my own kitchen. In the design field I know all the gadgets and storage methods but do I maintain them in my own kitchen? Nope!
You will need
- Notepad & pen
- Bag for rubbish
- Small box for charity/give away items
- Computer ready to order your organisational items
- Cloth & cleaning spray
- Timer
Steps
- Time to be tough. Pull out a) junk drawer b) wrap drawer c) Gadget/utensil drawer
- Set the timer for 5mins. You need to declutter each drawer in 5 minutes. This helps you to resist procrastinating and keeping things you don’t need.
- Go through all three drawers and split into keeps, give away and rubbish
- If you haven’t used it in 6 months its time to move it on
- Get rid of double ups. Do you really need two potato mashers? No, you don’t need different colours for different moods….be tough, cull it!
- Now start categorising the keeps pile into sizes or categories, this should give you an idea of the style of drawer organiser you need. Use my guide below to help give you an idea of some options to utilise.
- Pop the rubbish in the bin, get the charity or give away stuff in the car
ready to go to its new home. No cheating and dragging back that garlic peeler you have never used!! Give the drawers a good wipe out & clean. - Is there anything that would be best relocated to another area of the kitchen? This is important as a well functioning kitchen has necessities located close by the area it is used. A good example is the utensils drawer, why have your consistently used utensils tucked in a drawer? Consider relocating closer to the stove if you use it constantly.
- Further to point 7, if you use things rarely perhaps it would be best to relocate to a more isolated position. How about cake making equipment? You use it maybe a couple times a year? Better to store in a little container, labelled and placed in a less accessed cupboard.
- Order your drawer organisers then enjoy your beautifully organised set of drawers!!
- Tune in next week for the all important pantry organisation!!!
Organisational tools
- Drawer organisers for Junk drawers
The final choice will be personal preference and storage requirements.
a) Single insert style: Pros: Good amount of varying sized spaces. Cons: Limited in amount and also exactly what you can put in them
b) Layered style: Pros: Awesome for utilising maximum space, great amount of varying sized spaces. Cons: Not flexible for odd sized objects, not good for higher items in shallow drawers.
c) Large custom inserts: Pros – can alter configuration as suits your sized utensils, good for utensil drawers cons: can be hard to get things to fit as you require.
d) Varied size custom inserts: Pros – can alter configuration as suits your sized utensils, cons: not always secure, need to select a system that comes in equal sized/planned modules to fit to a generic sized drawer or they slip and slide *tip: If you pick a modular format use anti slip drawer lining underneath.
e) Horizontal & vertical dividers: Pros – customisable to whatever you have in your drawer Cons: Not quite as sturdy as a fully prefab drawer insert, hasn’t got really small inserts as junk drawers may require, however, you could always put a smaller divided container into the dividers.
f)
- Drawer organisers for Utensil/gadget drawers
a) Simple drawer dividers: Pros – Accomodates maximum large utensils Con: Does not account for effective division of smaller items
b) Combination drawer dividers & Large modular inserts: Pros: Allows storage of long items plus smaller sized gadgets/accessories. I couldn’t find a prefab drawer insert that is actually like this. Utensils wont generally sit in the shallow drawer insert slots properly. As mentioned previously if you select this option make sure you use non slip drawer liner.
c) Horizontal & vertical dividers: Pros – customisable to whatever you have in your drawer Cons: Not quite as sturdy as a fully prefab drawer insert
d) Maybe integrate a knife block e) Or extra spice storage? 
- Work area organisers for Utensils
To declutter the drawer and also have your tools at the ready while you are cooking consider moving the important ones to your cooking area if you haven’t already.
a) Utensil hangers: Ikea style bar & hook Pros: Easily accessible, easy to see the utensil you need Cons: Can look a little cluttered if you are wanting a minimalist look to your kitchen however it is possible to hang inside a cabinet or pantry door
b) Utensil caddys: Pros: Neatly organised and portable so you can move position whenever required. Cons: Still a little hard to see everything sometimes, expensive in comparison to just using a container
- Options for wrap organisation
a) Combination drawer dividers & Large modular inserts: Pros: Allows for wrap to sit depth ways, and you then have space for extra goodies in the inserts: package clips/ties, freezer bags etc etc.
b) A wrap caddy: Pros: Easily accessible, nice neat unit Cons: Cannot have more than 2 wraps so you still need to account for baking paper etc in the wrap drawer
Juicy bits
Some of the product sources that ship:
Website http://www.juiceinteriors.com/
FB look up Juice Interiors
Hope you enjoyed this :)
If you did, please take 5 to give me some feedback!!
