You open a kitchen cupboard and something falls out. The drawer with the utensils barely closes. There are three open packets of rice, several water bottles without matching lids, and an appliance at the back of a cupboard that hasn't been used in years.
You know the kitchen needs organising, but where do you begin?
The mistake many people make is thinking they need to tackle the entire kitchen at once. They imagine emptying every cupboard, sorting through everything and spending an entire weekend putting it all back together.
Fortunately, there is a much more manageable way to approach it.
Forget the Whole Kitchen. Choose One Problem.
Before you start removing anything from cupboards, think about what frustrates you most when using your kitchen.
Perhaps you can never find the right food container. Maybe preparing breakfast means moving several things out of the way. Or perhaps your worktop has become a permanent home for items that belong elsewhere.
Start with the problem that affects you most frequently.
There is little point spending an hour organising your baking equipment if the real frustration is finding a saucepan every evening.
Your First 20 Minutes
Choose one small area and give yourself 20 minutes. A single drawer, one cupboard shelf or a section of the worktop is enough.
Here's what to do:
Take everything out. You need to see what you're dealing with, including the things hiding at the back.
Identify what you actually use. Keep the items that serve a purpose in your kitchen today, rather than those you might possibly need one day.
Remove the obvious clutter. Broken utensils, unnecessary duplicates, expired food and containers without lids are good places to start.
Group what remains. Keep similar items together so you can see how much space they require.
Put everything back thoughtfully. The things you reach for most often should be the easiest to access.
And then stop.
You have completed one area. There is no need to empty another cupboard simply because you've started.
Don't Get Distracted by Storage Solutions
It's tempting to start looking at attractive jars, baskets and drawer dividers as soon as you decide to organise your kitchen.
But buying storage before decluttering often means finding better ways to store things you don't actually need.
Work with what you already have first. Once you've decided what deserves space in your kitchen, you'll have a much clearer idea of whether additional storage would be useful.
You might discover that removing a few unnecessary items gives you all the space you need.
What If You Can't Decide Whether to Keep Something?
Kitchen cupboards are full of items we hold onto for surprisingly long periods.
That bread maker you used twice. The extra dinner plates from a previous home. The collection of takeaway containers that keeps growing.
Ask yourself three questions:
When did I last use this?
Do I already own something that serves the same purpose?
Would I notice if this were no longer in my kitchen?
You don't need to get rid of everything you use infrequently. Special occasion crockery and seasonal equipment may still deserve their place. The important thing is making a conscious decision rather than keeping something simply because it's already there.
Make Your Next Step Obvious
Once you've finished your first area, take a quick look around and choose what you'd like to tackle next.
It might be the cutlery drawer tomorrow, the food cupboard at the weekend or the collection of mugs next week.
A kitchen becomes easier to organise when you stop treating it as one enormous project and start dealing with the individual spaces that aren't working.
You don't need to finish the kitchen today. You just need to make one part of it work better.
And if you'd prefer someone to take the lead, DeCluttr Me offers professional kitchen and pantry decluttering and organising services to help create practical spaces that suit the way you live.