5 Ways You Can Organize Your Kitchen’s Workspace
How can you make cooking faster and easier? One word: organization. Being organized is a way you can think fast by lessening the time you need to sort out tools and ingredients. Sort out the stuffs in the kitchen already, so your brain can follow a pattern and differentiate each item by instinct. Just like in the saying, “Organize your thoughts,” organizing your kitchen tools and utensils is a good way for you to remember where you put what thing. Once you’ve trained yourself to follow a pattern all the time, even if you are absentminded, your brain will instinctively lead your body to the location of the tool just as it remembers. Here are some tips you can organize your kitchen.
Use shelf organizers and dividers.
These usually come as boxes or small containers. You can use them to separate each item in your kitchen drawers or shelves. For example, place dividers in your drawers to separate forks from spoons and table knives and to separate table knives according to their use. The next time you open that drawer and you need a butter knife, you won’t have to pull out all the knives to look at each closely. Your hand will know which container holds the butter knives, and you just saved time unknowingly.
Re-purpose unused vases to sort out metal cooking tools from wooden and plastic ones.
This is another way you can sort out cooking tools apart from hanging them. When you need a metal wired whisk, your eyes will wander to just one vase.
Put up a pin board.
Save the refrigerator doors for notes that are only up there for a moment like: “Went out to buy oil, be back asap.” Use a pin board instead for important notes that you place up there as a reminder, such as: Pick up kids at 4:00. In fact, you can place a time table on the pin board. Write in there what activity you usually do at what time, so you reduce the risk of forgetting it. For activities you planned for the day, use stick notes and place them below the certain day you are meant to do what activity. Another way your pin board can be extra useful is by placing a wall clock beside it and attaching a timer on it.
Use labeled jars.
Take the ingredients out of their packages and place them in jars. Label these jars so you can distinguish which jar has what ingredient and save you the trouble of having to actually open the jar and figure out what it is. Use chalkboard labels, so you can use that jar to hold other stuff another time. For example, you used a jar to hold cornstarch before, but you needed more of it so you bought a bigger jar. Simply change the markings on the chalkboard label to repurpose the smaller jar. If you believe your glass jars have become obsolete and want to buy new ones, you may want to replace them with new environment friendly glass jars that you can buy from an ethical eco store like Mrs Green’s Eco Store. Eco-friendly glass jars are recyclable and may be less harmful to the environment than plastic or traditional glass jars. Glass jars are also useful in the kitchen because they are sustainable, inert, 100 percent and infinitely recyclable, reusable, and refillable. Additionally, they are safe to store food and drinks, and look beautiful too.
Another way you can clear your working space is by clearing the cupboards of glasses, and to put there instead the small appliances you barely use, such as the bread maker. You can find wineglass holders and wire racks at hardware stores or stores like Walmart. This can also work for mugs and cups, by taking wire racks and putting up part of it beneath the cupboard or another part of the kitchen. Make sure these hangers are put up at a place where it can’t be hit upon or bump into.
Again wire racks and other organizational equipment can be found in many shapes and sizes at shops like Walmart, so you are highly likely to find one that will fit your cupboards. And if you can use one of the coupons that you can find here whilst shopping there, buying equipment to organize your kitchen with should not be as costly a venture.
All in all, these are just some of the ways you can organize your kitchen. Once you get the knack of organizing, the other methods will come to you by instinct. Do share your thoughts or other ways people can be more creative in organizing their kitchen.