Organizing and Storage

We love seeing our readers’ kitchen solutions for storage and organization. This photo and email from a reader named Brent was especially inspiring. He and his wife organized nearly everything in their kitchen on one wire shelving unit — read a little more about it here…Brent says: We have an open kitchen with very little wall space (what space we have is taken up by our spice rack and knife magnet).

Breakfast bars, or separate “morning areas,” are coveted details in kitchens with room to spare. In smaller kitchens, hideaway features, like this tabletop, are incredibly useful. What about combining the two features and creating a hideaway breakfast area—in this case, a roll-out cabinet dedicated to your morning joe, complete with pot-filler faucet!

Baker Mary Wolf, aka Miss Treats, has been sprucing up her Los Angeles rental kitchen and we love her DIY solution for storing and displaying KitchenAid attachments, measuring cups, and spoons.Cooking tools like mixer attachments and measuring cups can be a challenge to store in a small kitchen. Mary came up with this functional and attractive way to keep them at easy reach while baking her scones, biscuits, and cakes. (Quite scrumptious baked goods, we might add!

Pot lids are one of the trickiest things to store well in the kitchen. They don’t stack; they slide all over the place in the cupboards. Reader Caroline and her partner came up with a smart, unexpected way to store pot lids: Flying saucers on hooks under the cabinets!Caroline says: We have a tiny little kitchen and needed a better solution for our pot lids. Mike came up with an awesome space-saving idea that cost practically nothing. A few screw hooks and we were set!

When a reader recently left a comment stating that they had made a great under-the-cabinet knife rack, I didn’t think much of it until I saw the genius that it truly was. Instead of putting a rack on your backsplash (which still prohibits you from putting anything in front of it), check out this under-cabinet trick!Kaela over at Local Kitchen left us a great tip a few days ago when we were busy chatting about awkward kitchen spaces.

Kitchen pegboards are awesome. They can hold and organize anything in the kitchen, from pots and pans to your iPad. Julia Child made them famous, and others followed suit — we showed you a pegboard in the kitchen of her editor, Judith Jones. Today we have some tips for creating and hanging your own pegboard, from Kate Payne of The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking. Our new kitchen pretty much trumps all kitchens in my checkered past of rental kitchens.

“Clean as you go” is a piece of cooking advice I took to heart years ago, so when I’m in the kitchen with someone who doesn’t follow the same principles, my stress levels rise and I start looking around desperately for a sponge. Are you the same way?When I first starting cooking, frequent cleaning was a necessity; I had a single two-foot-long counter in my kitchen, so I didn’t have space for a mess.

I’m a sucker for a bit of rustic organization, especially in the kitchen, and these baskets hit the spot. Cheap, hard-wearing, and versatile, baskets are the perfect cheap organization solution.I currently have three baskets on top of my kitchen cupboards to hold tools and appliances I need but don’t use everyday, but you can also use them to hold root vegetables, pots and pans, and linens.

I love my dish scrubbers, but they can be tricky to find homes for on the sink. Even in the cutest container they still just look like a dish brush. Hide them out of sight while still giving them room to breathe and dry properly. Check out this simple tip for renters and home owners alike.We stopped in over at Tatertots and Jello and checked into the recent organizational endeavors of Jen who caught the New Year bug big time.

Even though you can’t eat them and you don’t really serve food out of them, somehow, flower vases seem to end up being stored in the kitchen. If you’re lucky enough to have a china hutch, they might find a corner to call home, but in my kitchen, my vases always seem to be in the way!My last several homes have all been open loft style apartments or homes.

With all the hustle and bustle in the kitchen this Thanksgiving, I quickly realized the insufficiency of my recipe organization. Cards and clippings were floating everywhere, getting sprinkled with water and gravy, and disappearing in the chaos. So before Christmas arrives, I’ve decided to devote some time to reorganizing my recipes in the hopes of making my life easier and facilitating better use.

During the fall and winter months, many of us have a larger stockpile of canned goods on hand. Depending on your pantry, cabinets or storage space, they aren’t always easy to arrange for easy access. This simple storage idea helps you group similar cans together and find them with ease. Can you guess what it’s made from?This canned goods storage system was created using an empty soda pop cardboard box. It was covered in nice paper and labeled.

My spice cabinet is currently bursting at the seams and ready for some reorganization, so this storage idea from Adrianna at A Cozy Kitchen is mighty appealing. The best part: she turned the jar lids into mini chalkboards, so the jars can be used for any number of spices.The 5-ounce glass jars above are from The Container Store and have mouths wide enough to fit a tablespoon, for easier measuring. (Mason jars would also work for larger amounts of spices.

My husband likes to mock-complain that my kitchen storage has taken over more and more of our house. Not content with our narrow kitchen cupboards, I converted a coat closet into a bright pantry, and then turned my attention to the dining room, where a big red cabinet and a sideboard now hold most of our dishes and glassware. I admit I may have a dish problem (I have the excuse of buying just one more “for work!

Last week Ohdeedoh featured a bathroom cabinet with a pull-out step — a great use of normally discarded space. These slide-out drawers for your kitchen are no different. If you put drawers under your cabinets, you can find great extra storage, even if you rent!Our friends at Charles and Hudson shared this great project over at The Family Handyman. It’s an improvement that is nearly invisible and in a kitchen where space is short (aren’t they all?), it’s a great addition!

Where do you store your cookbooks? Do they live in the kitchen, or somewhere else in the house? Cheryl Sternman Rule at 5 Second Rule has a unique way of storing and displaying a rotating selection of her cookbooks. She puts them up, face-out, on shelves right in the kitchen! Cheryl shows off her wall o’ cookbooks in a post on recipe organization and searching. She puts up the books she’s currently cooking out of (see all those sticky notes and tabs in the pages?

We’ve had a lot of reader response to last week’s post on spice storage ideas. Reader Sue emailed us with her totally organized, totally maximized spice cupboard — and we think it’s great.Sue said: I so enjoyed seeing the spice storage solutions you posted on Apartment Therapy today. I love using spices and so regretted I had such little room for them in my tiny remodeled Vermont kitchen.

Looking for the perfect way to organize all the recipes you find as you wander around the web? This new Recipe Box app might just be the answer to your prayers.I admit that I was pretty skeptical of this app at first. Between Google Reader and Evernote, I have a pretty good set-up already going for keeping my electronic recipe collection organized.It took me all of five minutes for The Recipe Box to convince me of its charms.

Q: Over the last couple of years I’ve started buying a lot more bulk items in an effort to cook more whole foods for health, and also for the economical factor. I’m wondering if anyone has a great idea for how to store and organize all of these bulk items (beans, oats, flours, nuts and other grains) in an attractive way in a small kitchen. My limited counter is becoming over run with glass canisters, and my pantry is filled with twist-tied bags. Help!

Let’s hope not by sitting them on the counter. But seriously, what is the best way to keep little ones occupied while you dice, sauté, and open oven doors? We’re talking kids who are too young to help out in the kitchen or sit quietly in front of a DVD in another room. Want our tips? Want to share yours?I have a one-year-old, and my saviors have been the spice rack and the recycling bins.

During this week of the Kitchen Cure we are encouraging all the Cure-takers to restock their kitchens, but also to take on one small kitchen project. From hanging a shelf to painting a wall, this is just a project that will beautify and improve your kitchen. So I am sharing a few projects I did in my own kitchen this past year. The first: Converting a dingy, shallow hall closet into a bright and useful pantry.I live in a hundred-year-old house, and it has its charm.

Shawna’s Glamorous Custom Kitchen Even when we don’t have time for a full cleanup and overhaul of our kitchen storage, the smallest effort can still make the largest difference, especially when it comes to your pantry. Whether you have a big pantry closet or a single shelf of jars, here are six things to help you pull it into shape tonight.

With a color-coordinated, Roy G. Biv-ishly arranged dish display like this one, we’re not even sure we needed to say her name. This kitchen belongs to the magazine’s design director, and the rest of the space is just as immaculate and charming.This was featured in a 2008 issue of Martha Stewart Living, but we’d never seen it until we found it on the website.

Q: I know you’re supposed to store tomatoes on the counter to prevent them from developing a mealy texture.But what about tomatoes you’ve already cut into? Sometimes I just want a couple slices for a sandwich, and it seems like the fridge is the best place for the leftover tomato — is it?Sent by ClaireEditor: Claire, we often wonder this same thing!

Reader Laura sent us a wonderful easy and cheap kitchen project she just completed: A custom knife block for a kitchen drawer. The IKEA model she wanted was discontinued, and others were too expensive for her budget. She realized that she could easily make one herself, and the results are pretty awesome.Laura realized that she could make her ultimate knife drawer insert herself — and it would fit better than any off-the-rack model.

Q: I have a problem with storing the blades for my Cuisinart DLC. The shredding and slicing blades come with the fixed rods that are difficult to store safely. Right now, I have been keeping them in the Styrofoam block they came in, but that is not very space-efficient.Do you or the readers know of any other cases or easy DIY fixes? Thanks in advance!

Yesterday’s high kitchen storage post led us to the inevitable: shopping around for step stools. But once you have a step stool for reaching those high cabinets, you probably aren’t going to have it out all the time. So, where do you store it in between uses?These are four ways to store a kitchen step stool that are convenient and keep the stool out of the way when not in use. Plus, a few are so hidden that the owner is probably the only one privy to their whereabouts!

In our previous apartment, our tiny kitchen had no drawers. Drawers seem essential for items like flatware, cooking utensils, and kitchen linens. But there are ways to get along without drawers, too. Here are a few storage solutions for those with drawer-less (or too-few-drawered) kitchens. Get decorative. Shelves can hold pretty urns that in turn contain kitchen utensils and dish cloths. Under-shelf brackets like these from The Container Store let you store more than your shelves can hold.

[Today organizing expert Stacey Platt shares a few tips on finding more space in the kitchen. Stacey is the most organized person I know, but understands with great compassion how unorganized many people can be. Here are some ideas from her new book, What’s a Disorganized Person to Do?. Welcome, Stacey!]Now, thanks to The Kitchen Cure’s Week #2 assignment, your kitchen de-cluttered and you’ve probably freed up a lot of space.

Q: I hate spice racks! They take up so much space and they tend to look messy. But my solution of having a bunch of spices shoved in a shoebox (I write the names on the tops) isn’t working either!Help! What do people use for spices that won’t take up all of my counter space and will look neat?Sent by Mary BethEditor: Mary Beth, we agree — spice storage can be a pain!

No matter how organized we are in the rest of the kitchen, food storage containers always seem to pose a threat to the order, with their varying shapes and sizes, orphaned parts, and frequent relegation to the darkest and lowest corners of our cupboards. Sound familiar? Here’s how to tame the clutter.• First, pull out all of your containers and lids and lay them on a counter or table.

Q: Is there a rule to how often you should clean out your pantry? Just today I took the time to go through everything and I found so many expired items. (Jell-O with a date from 2005!)Is there a standard for how often you should go through your shelves so you don’t end up with so many expired items?Sent by PattieEditor: Pattie, it sounds like you could use the Kitchen Cure!

Q: Help! I live in an apartment where I have no control over the heat temperature during the winter months. I love to cook, but anything not in the fridge spoils quickly because of the dry heat! (Onions, garlic, bread, potatoes…) Average temps within my apartment are 75 degrees.Do you have any suggestions for keeping food fresh in a warm/hot apartment?Sent by LizEditor: Liz, that sounds terrible!

We were tired of our kitchen towels constantly slipping off the oven handle and winding up on the floor, so we devised this handy solution. It works quite well and we think it looks pretty cute, too!All this takes is a few lengths of leftover ribbon or yarn and some bull clips. Tie the ribbons in a square knot around the handle (“right over left, leftover right, makes the knot tidy and tight!”) so the ends lie flat and the knot stays tight even after repeated use.

We get a lot of questions and requests for advice on recipe organization systems, so we were excited to see this recipe binder from Jaime and and Jacinda at Prudent Baby. It’s very practical and inspirational, and they’ve included some free downloads to help you create your own version.Do you keep a binder like this?

Small kitchens have to make good use of every scrap of space, and the side of the refrigerator is often wide open and begging to be used. What about taking down the magnets and pizza menus and putting up one of these side shelves instead? These two over-the-side-of-the-fridge shelves leave something to be desired in their aesthetics; we think they’re fairly clunky and verging on kitschy. But they do look terribly practical!

We love all the creative spice storage solutions our readers send in! We’ve seen quite a few lately, and here’s one more from reader Anna.Anna writes: Thanks for the post on the magnetic spice rack. We’ve been looking for a way to organise our spices for ages and this post inspired us to finally do something about the mess in our cupboard.

Back in September, reader Theresa showed us her DIY over-the-door pot rack. We decided to make a similar version in our own kitchen, and while our pots are nowhere near as nice and shiny as Theresa’s and our rack is slightly crooked at the moment, it’s already made a big space-saving difference.I (Joanna) installed my pot rack on an exterior door that leads to the back porch of my apartment. (We’ve joked that it doubles as a DIY burglar alarm.

Are you busy deep-cleaning and fixing up your kitchen this week? What small project have you tackled? Here’s one very small project that nevertheless can really make a difference in a small cupboard or drawer: organizing your cookie cutters. Cure-taker Carol shows us how she did it!Carol says: I wanted to share my solution for cookie cutters.

Which common kitchen utensil do you think it is? We actually have two (maybe three) of this space-hogging tool, and as we thought about de-cluttering this week, we realized we never, ever use it. We bet you have at least one in your utensil holder, too…There are even two of them in the picture above.It’s a ladle. And we’re pretty sure almost all of you have one. Ladles are a mainstay in any utensil set, and they seem like such a no-brainer. You make soup? You need a ladle.

Whether or not you’re involved in an organizational overhaul as part of our Fall Kitchen Cure, you might find some inspiration in this simple, clean spice rack from Anna at Door Sixteen. She elevated some basic IKEA bottles with Martha Stewart labels and spaced the racks so she could still close the cabinet door.

I’m a busy working college student so this is what happens. I have made the best of my “kitchenette” but it is definitely in need the cure. (aubreylane in Santa Cruz, CA)One thing that keeps popping up in the Kitchen Cure submissions is concerns over cookbook storage and the question of how many is too many. First, let’s get a sense of how many cookbooks you have lurking on your shelves.

“There are no drawers and the shelves are surprisingly high, which is why not too much stuff is on the top shelves of my cabinets. It’s also why I didn’t bother opening the cabinets above the fridge, they are too high for me to reach! Through this cure, I’d like to get my kitchen organized better. I like to keep everything I use frequently to be within reach.

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) OK, 50 is a liiiittle bit of an overstatement, considering many of the “ideas” are product placements from the House Beautiful Kitchen of the Year that was on display in Rockefeller Center. However, it was a replica of Ina Garten’s actual East Hampton kitchen, and she does have some good ideas we could steal.One of them—adding a lamp to our kitchen decor—is something we’ve talked about before.

Our stream of reader pot rack solutions continues, with one more clever idea from reader Theresa. She didn’t have much room for a pot rack in her small kitchen, so she created an over-the-door version with inexpensive materials. Here’s how she did it.Theresa writes: I live in a 1900’s flat with little cabinet space and recently bought my first set of pots and pans (been cooking in the set my mother received as a wedding gift 35 years ago).

It seems like everyone is going vertical in the kitchen! We just showed you this vertical pot rack built with inexpensive materials from the hardware store. Now here’s another version of a similar idea — but this one is built with hardware and hooks from IKEA.

Removing the measuring spoons from their ring feels like a major taboo, doesn’t it? No matter how awkward or downright annoying it’s been to use one scoop while holding back the others, it never seemed quite right to actually divide them up. Well, friends, it’s time we got over that mindset!This is one of those simple and rather obvious tips that really makes such a difference.

Q: Last week, Mark Bittman of the New York Times blogged about photographer Pedro Guerrero’s experience shooting Julia Child’s kitchen. I fell in LOVE with her peg board wall — it would be the most amazing solution to my lack of cabinets.But I need an honest opinion: Does this only work in theory (it works because it’s, well, Julia Child), and not in practice? I worry that it might look sloppy, and wonder if there’s a secret to making it successful.

We are constantly bookmarking new recipes on the web, spotting new ingredients to try, and tearing articles out of magazines. Keeping all these bits and pieces organized is tough, but so many of programs that promise to help end up being too good to be true. But Evernote! This is one program that might just actually be able to deliver.Evernote is one of the first programs we’ve found that seems to synchronize our internet life with our real-world life.

Those who are participating in The Kitchen Cure know that Week Three’s Assignment has you stocking the kitchen. This is a nice opportunity to stream-line your cabinets by replacing some of that ugly, clunky packaging with jars.I love storing our food this way because I get a good seal and I can see what’s inside.

Yesterday we asked you for your best knife storage solutions. Where do you store your knives? Do you hang them on the wall? Throw them in a drawer? Well, several of you responded, and here’s a look at some of your favorite knife-keeping products, as well as real-life photos of where you store your knives. If you’d like to show us your knives too, just send us a photo and we’ll add it to this gallery.

Let’s help Kitchen Cure-taker woodnymph here with their refrigerator and freezer issue. This was their note to me along with the above photos:fridge (notice the gross spill in the bottom – who knows how long that’s been there?)door (thing often fall out when you open or close it)freezer (no idea what’s in back) We need to help this person get their Cure going!What are your favorite tips for organizing your refrigerator and freezer?

Week #1 assignment in the Kitchen Cure is to clean out your fridge and pantry. That includes the freezer, and we’re considering one way to make more space: eliminating two of those ice trays above.We’re betting many of you who live in apartments use ice trays. Old refrigerators (or, as in our case, brand new ones that don’t back up to a water source) don’t have automatic ice makers, so ice trays it is.

Do you have deep kitchen drawers? We have a couple, and they are always getting jumbled up; it’s so easy to throw a lot of stuff in there! Well, we are smitten by these in-drawer organizers from Studio Becker, which we recently spotted at the Washington Spaces blog. Take a look, and also see our suggestions for a some cheaper alternatives.TOP ROW• 1 & 2 We love all these in-drawer storage options from Studio Becker!

Last week, Faith asked where you hang your kitchen towels. The answers ranged from “over the edge of the sink” to “on the oven handle,” typical places I’ve hung my towels, too. But inspired by the post—and a fancy hook I hadn’t found a use for yet—I hung a hook the other day. Seems like a pretty small thing, right? Let me tell you, it has made a huge difference.I used to hang my dish towels over the oven handle.

We’ve talked at length about pot racks and using them (and other storage solutions) to organize your pots and pans. But really, when it comes down to it, our pots aren’t the problem: it’s the lids. Mine are constantly knocking about, sliding around and getting in the way. Here are five solutions and products for pot lids — do you use one of these to keep your pot lids in place? • 1 Install bars on the inside of cabinet doors – At Martha Stewart.

Here’s a question from Anna, who is trying to decide where to put her pot rack. Read on to take our reader survey on pot racks over the stove; can you help Anna decide where to put her pot rack?I’m wondering about over the stove pot racks. I’ve seen some photos where people hung them directly or near the stove top. That would work in my tiny kitchen but my concern has been grease.

We are so blown away by the kitchen storage in this house tour just posted at Apartment Therapy. It’s a compact studio galley, with some great ideas for real-life kitchen organization, and just to put it over the top, the owner takes her chief design inspiration from David Lance Goines. Goines is perhaps best known for his iconic posters and illustrations for Chez Panisse, and we are huge fans of his too. Take a look at Susy’s perfect kitchen, and see the tips we found most helpful.

Oh, if only our kitchen cabinets had just four bowls and a few hand towels in them… The reality is that we’ve got piles of things in our cupboards and always need new ways to be more organized. These undershelf baskets are a dream. Want to know how we use ours?We have a big stack of plastic take-out containers that we clean and reuse like Tupperware, and the lids are always stacked precariously on top of the bottoms.

Over the weekend we showed you Brooke’s Vintage Collections, a beautiful slideshow of ten things Brooke loves in her cute blue and white kitchen. One of them was her cookware stand, an item that was completely new to us. It’s a freestanding alternative to a pot rack that hangs on your wall or ceiling; it has a relatively small footprint and solves the problem of limited cabinet space.

See these artfully arranged spices from Dean & Deluca? Aren’t they pretty? They were a wedding gift. From 2005. In the spirit of our February Jumpstart Project, we’re vowing to deal with these…OK, we don’t really use these spices. The test tube-like bottles are especially annoying, and we think this set was created more for eye candy than for actual cooking (there are solid pebbles of Fenugreek in there).

Springpad is an online note-keeping system designed to keep you more organized, and it has a special section just for planning weekly meals and groceries. Check it out…We’ll admit, we tend to be pretty haphazard about our shopping and meal planning. We swing by the farmers’ market, grocery store, bodega on the corner, etc. almost daily, never quiet knowing what we want to cook until a few hours before.Most of you are more organized (just read the comments on this post).

We were immediately drawn in by this photo when we saw it. The caption says it’s called mandhani, a steel shelving system you’d see in most working class kitchens in Mumbai…An Internet search didn’t turn up any more information on this type of storage. Does anyone know if this is typical in Indian kitchens?We just love the simplicity of the shelving and the efficiency of having everything within arm’s reach.

Sometimes we think that the average spice jar is really too small for our needs. You can’t even fit a teaspoon into some of those narrow jars, and it also seems like we’re always refilling ours. Well, take a look at this recycled solution for spice storage.All those jars started life as Bonne Maman jam jars, and we like how they’ve found new life as spice containers!

When I got married last summer I bought several dozen vintage blue Mason jars as flower vases for the reception. I loved their greeny-blue color — but I also loved their functionality. I had plans for these jars, post-wedding, and I finally put my plan into action.I don’t have a lot of pantry space in this kitchen; most of the cupboards are quite narrow and shallow.