Organizing and Storage

When you open the doors under your kitchen sink, what do you see? I have an old plastic bin of cleaning supplies and a few other random things thrown in back. I am very inspired, though, to get this dark cave cleaned up and organized thanks to Jen at IHeart Organizing — take a look at what she did to her own under-sink area!Jen added a few new things that really cleaned up this area.

I am in the process of setting up a new kitchen, with all the decisions, indecisions, and rearrangements that settling into a new cooking space entails. Every time I start in a new space, there’s fresh resolve to fix the things that drove me crazy in the last one. This time, for instance, I decided to create order out of the tangled mess of my measuring spoons. Here’s how I organized them, and why.

January is the perfect time for a kitchen tune-up. A new year has dawned, and with it the possibility of new cooking adventures. If tackling your kitchen seems overwhelming, start with one (or all) of these eight tips for a neater, cleaner, and more organized kitchen.1. Get rid of plastic packaging in the pantry and store your food in clear containers. Nothing breaks up the flow of a pretty pantry more than a mess of plastic packaging piled one on top of the other.

The momentum of the new year has me inspired to do a clean sweep in my kitchen, so I can start 2013 with a pantry, fridge and freezer full of fresh and inspiring ingredients. Unfortunately, I don’t have a full day to tackle this project, so I’m breaking it down into steps that can be completed in 20 minutes or less per day for five days. Want to join me? Start today and by Monday morning your kitchen will be cleaned out and ready for a new year of cooking.

Recently we shared a pro tip for using masking tape to label food and containers in the kitchen. Here’s a similar tool that’s incredibly useful for kitchen labeling and organizing: blue (or green) painter’s tape!In my kitchen, I use painter’s tape and a permanent marker to label everything from mise en place to leftovers, infusions, pantry jars, and more.

We’re always looking for ways to improve kitchen organization — especially when it comes to spices, which can easily get cluttered and disorganized. Personally, I love stashing my spices away in a drawer, but my spice drawer never looked this good. Take a look at reader Kavita’s freshly-organized spice drawer — isn’t this inspiring?

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!

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.

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.

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?

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 EvernoteIt took me all of five minutes for The Recipe Box to convince me of its charms. The app opens to a standard Home screen, like you see in the screenshot at the very top of this post.

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!

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!

[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.

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.

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.

Removing the measuring spoonsrightThis is one of those simple and rather obvious tips that really makes such a difference. Single measuring spoons are a lot easier to maneuver into small jars of ingredients, and we’re not constantly trying to keep used measuring spoons from touching the clean ones. We also use the tablespoon and teaspoon measure the most, so there’s really no need to mess with the entire set every time we cook.

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?