Lets get organised

I spend a lot of time in the kitchen and no I'm not tied to the oven or the sink. I work at the kitchen table, music & coffee machine on. We sit and chat in the kitchen, we eat all our meals at the table & it really is the heart and soul of our house. I often look at Pinterest and see pictures of beautiful kitchens and my heart aches for a lottery win so I can buy a house with a room like this

http://www.picthouse.info/white-french-country-kitchen-cabinets/

Oh well maybe my numbers will come up next week! My kitchen actually looks like this, its not minimulist or perfect but I love it and even more now my lovely mom spent three days last week emptying every single cupboard and drawer and reorganising it. My mom has an amazing skill for seeing a room and making it better and I want to share these tips with you.

My kitchen is pretty large, we knocked the small dining room and kitchen into one large room and moved the door to take advantage of the space as soon as we moved in. And yes my mom designed this kitchen too.

 

Hands up I admit that until last week I had far too much stuff shoved in cupboards and drawers and to my shame we even found a packet of crisps hidden at the back of one cupboard that were out of date in 2009! Not anymore though. Lets start with those hundreds of crisp packets that we buy in multipacks and then cant store them. Oh yes and lets not forget all the bottles of juice, plastic cups, plates, straws and in this house milkshakes! Crisps are now kept in a large plastic box that fits easily in the cupboard. Simply pull it out, grab what you need and put away! All the kids stuff is easy to hand so they can help themselves to a drink or plate.

Next up is the spice cabinet. If you are like me you have loads of jars of herbs, spices, stocks and flavourings. We do love our Slimming World but you do need to have a hearty collection of these and they can take over. Well after emptying my cupboard we found not one, not two but five bottles of balsamic vinegar! Lets get them organised. Throw away any out of date jars, organise them so you can find them easily. I use this pull out draw system to quickly find what I need. And what a great idea to store stock cubes.

I have a cupboard thats really difficult to get to with my kitchen table so we (I say we, I mean my mom) decided to use this cupboard to store things that are not used on a daily basis such as equipment and baking things. Again storing things in boxes makes life so much easier, just slide the box out, no emptying the contents of the cupboard all over the floor anymore!

Didnt actually realise how many cake cutters I have!

Onto food storage, my mom is a firm believer of storing things with the same as so tins should be with tins, pasta, rice, couscous etc should be together, desserts should be together. You get the idea? This is four different cupboards all very neatly organised.

We've recently discovered we love herbal teas and the boxes of different flavours were taking over the cupboard so I had (yes me) had an idea. Take the teabags out the boxes and put them into ziplock bags not forgetting to cut the label from the box. All neatly stored into a plastic box on a really narrow shelf.

Having an organised kitchen makes a huge difference when planning and cooking, its the little things that make a difference - having chopping boards to hand, knowing exactly where things are, keeping it simple, de cluttering often!

Finally I have what I think in the USA is known as a control centre. Think we just call it a calendar and pin board but hey control centre sounds far fancier. This is my bit, its when the wall planners are, pens, scissors, sticky tape, note books, notice board, school letters, recipe books etc are. 

Happy organising!