StocksyYour Best Year Ever continues! All throughout the month of June, personal organization guru Laura Cattano will teach us how to regain control over the chaos.
They say the kitchen is the heart of the home. If that's true, are you heart-healthy? Is your kitchen set up like a Michelin Star Chef's, or do you have four junk drawers filled with old takeout menus and three can openers because you never know where they are? And hey, no judgment, no one is perfect. But your kitchen can be....
Advertisement - Continue Reading BelowEverything in the kitchen falls into one of three categories: prep, cooking, serving. Divide everything into these categories and store them together where they are used. For instance, keep pots and pans nearest the stove/oven, and serving pieces nearest the dishwasher. Store all baking supplies together—where you store it depends on how often you bake. Rule of thumb: the less often something is used, the higher it goes.
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NEXT STOP: COFFEE STATION

If you enjoy coffee and/or tea, create a station. Coffee machine on the counter, coffee mugs and sweeteners in a cabinet right above (regardless of where the rest of your glasses live!) Lots of clients fight me on this at first, saying they like all their cups together or don't have room for it. I just do it without telling them, letting them discover it on their own. No one has reverted back.

JUNK DRAWER JUNKIE

You don't need a junk drawer. You just don't. Clean it out, keeping only the things you actually need in the kitchen, which is usually one-tenth of what's in there. Pens that don't work? Out. Miscellaneous receipts, takeout menus, rubber balls, grocery lists? Be gone. Now you have a whole new drawer! What to put here? Pick a category: towels, prep tools, knives, specialty servicing pieces like those huge salad spoons and cake servers, or put back the 'junk' in an organized way; pens that actually work, notepads, batteries, whatever. Just make sure it's not a jumbled mess.

SPLIT THE DIFFERENCE

If you only use half of a set of something regularly, store that half low and the rest on the hard-to-reach upper shelf for those few occasions you may need them. The lower shelves should be for what you use the most. Plates stacked 12 high can be a bit much, especially for us shorties.

STOP MONKEYING AROUND

If you're designing your new kitchen, don't use lower cabinets, install drawers instead. I mean really, do you love crawling on the floor to get to the back of the lowest shelf? Neither do I. For those of us not designing a new kitchen, use freestanding elfa drawers from the Container Store, or install pullouts. Just be sure to measure not the inside of the cabinet, but the opening between hinges with doors open. One client called the drawers 'life changing.' You'll think so too.