Friday, February 15, 2008

Start In The Kitchen With Appliances

As promised earlier this week, I am committed to sharing some of my organization ideas with everyone. I have found that the easiest place to lose organization is in the kitchen. That is probably because it's the hub of a home with lots of activity. But it's fairly easy to develop a system that can keep you on track, organized and clean. It requires much evaluation of what you do need and what you don't need and it requires a lot of creative planning on how to best utilize your shelves, spaces and pantry.

The very first thing that you do when organizing any space is to remove everything from that space and place it all outside the space. I realize that this is a tall order when you are dealing with a kitchen as most of us have a lot of things in our cabinets. But you don't have to do the entire kitchen all at once. You can tackle sections at a time. This is actually a better approach because I have found that if you try to do too much too quickly you can get tired and discouraged easily.

I am going to break down all of the many parts of a kitchen throughout various posts but I want to dedicate this space to appliances. The average kitchen probably has somewhere from 8-10 appliances in it. In my kitchen I have four. I just am not a big fan of them and don't really use them. However, I do have a crock pot, toaster, blender, and a small coffee pot for parties. All four of these appliances fit in one of the bottom cabinets where I bring them out only when I need them. My general rule of thumb is that if the appliance does not get used daily then it needs to be in a cabinet and off of your countertops. Keep in mind that the more appliances that you have out in full view the more visual clutter you have and the less space you have with which to cook and prepare meals. Analyze your appliances carefully and if you have not used an appliance in a few months, think about whether or not you really need it. If you don't need it, donate it to charity. If you do then keep it tucked away for the occasional times that you will use it.

You will find that if you narrow down the appliances that you own by 50%, you will magically have space leftover to store more things up and away from the kitchen countertops and that makes for more clutter free space.

Next time around I will talk about what to do with all of that tupperware. This is a quick solution to add lots of cabinet space. If you have any suggestions for future posts please leave a comment and I will get to it.

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