Here's a small tip from my own kitchen, on the topic of cake and cookie decorating tools and paraphernalia. I have quite a collection of cake decorating tips and bags, as well sprinkles, coloring gels, and other specialty ingredients. These things were practically falling out of my baking cupboard, knocking around and hard to find when I needed them. And then, plastic shoebox to the rescue!
I decided to box up everything that had to do with cake and cookie decorating. The food colors, pastry bags and tips, and all the sprinkles went into one big box that only comes down when I need to do a decorating project.
As you can see, this box is messy and unorganized, but it's not easy to wrangle all those little jars of sprinkles and gels into orderliness, and the tips just bang around and do their own thing. But that's the beauty of this system; I don't need to keep it organized at all. Everything stays contained in this one box, and it's easy to take down and put back up again when I'm done. I don't have to wonder whether I have pink sprinkles; I know exactly where they'll be.
I was surprised by how relieved I was by my freshly uncluttered baking cupboard, too! No more accidental spills of yellow food coloring, smeared over the flour container. And no more nonpareils scattered on the floor of the cupboard. It's all safely tucked away.
I'm a big fan of using shoeboxes like this one to contain kitchen items (I use another one for my cookie cutters). But given how small most decorating tools and ingredients are, and how much I like to accumulate new colors of sprinkles and other goodies, I think that this system is perhaps most ideally suited to this kind of paraphernalia.
Do you have decorating tips and bags and other tools in your cupboard? How do you keep them organized?
Related: Reader Organization Tip: How To Store Cookie Cutters
(Images: Faith Durand)
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For the little things in my "baking closet", I use larger Lock & Lock boxes...one for candy making...one for sugars, food coloring and similar items...one for cookie cutters and another for pancake molds/tartlette molds. I have to agree...I LOVE having them all separated in boxes. I just go in and get whatever box I need that I will be using at that time and have at it. No digging anymore...wondering where something went. I would have to say it (the whole closet) is one of my better organizing ideas in my kitchen. I always smile when I go into it. It might not be the prettiest, but everything has a place.
I do this for my cookie cutters (thank you theKitchn!) and this is another great idea for all of those small odds and ends for baking.
This hint feels just a teeny bit simplistic and obvious.
I'm taking a cake decorating class, so my collection of supplies has just doubled, and I recently picked up a box for just this purpose. I also grabbed a small plastic craft box with a bunch of tiny compartments for storing my icing tips, and it is now so much easier to find the tip I need for a project. I know Wilton makes storage boxes specifically for this, but so far, this is working well for me.
If you have a lot of tips and couplers (or small bottles of food coloring) I find the best way to keep them crazy organized is to get one of those cheapo organizers at home depot for screws and bolts. Has maybe 6x10 rows of little pull out plastic compartments you can label and have easy out of the way access to.
This is a great tip!! Re-arranging my baking shelf right now=)
Sorry but it maynot eb an obvious tip to many of us who are organizationally challenged!! like moi
I keep decorating items like this in Christmas cookie tins that are already sitting in my kitchen unused and taking up space.
I actually have had this idea for months as I saw all of my decorating supplies piling up in my apartment. Then I made a trip to Michaels the other day and saw these - http://www.michaels.com/Decorative-Paper-Boxes/hd0490,default,pd.html . They are gorgeously decorated shoebox-type thingies that now (although I didn't see them on their website) have lovely floral, paris and spring designs on them. Of course bought a "medium sized" one. This one is spacey and decorative enough for me to just leave on my counter. :)
Over-the-top for non-obsessed folks, but I love my Wilton caddy (I wrote about it here: http://www.mrscake.co.nz/2010/10/mrs-cakes-tools-and-toys.html) - keeps all the tips neat and fits (fortunately) an astonishingly large number of other miscellaneous decorating equipment underneath.
I do the same for decorating, cookie cutters, and also specialty ingredients (grouped by type). pantry clutter is the enemy!
I have a set of wire storage cubes and milk crates to store my baking stuff in, specialty ingredients in one (chocolates, vanilla paste, flavored oils, etc) cookie cutters in "theme" zipper bags in another two, the boxes that hold my colors, tips, sprinkles, squeeze bottles and bags in another, specialty tools in a fifth, and fondant supplies in the sixth. Seems like a lot, but I just rent a room (from my parents, so I can use the kitchen, but don't want to overcrowd their cupboards) and actually make wedding cakes (at a bakery) for a living, so I'm always experimenting and practicing things I learned at pastry school.
This is a great tip--don't know why I didn't think of it before! I currently have all my decorating tools and supplies spread throughout four different cabinets/drawers/and the pantry! The food coloring is in the cabinet above the sink, and is hard to find, and then sometimes falls or gets knocked into the sink. One of those little shoe boxes will fit great up there. I will add one to my list right now, and work on it this weekend! = )