Setting Up a Functional & Efficient Kitchen

Getting the pantry in order made the rest of the kitchen look like a disaster. Well, from the outside looking in, it looked fine. But behind all those cupboards and drawers lay an unorganized jumble of kitchen supplies with no apparent rhyme or reason. How many is “all those” you ask? 16 drawers and 19 cupboards to be exact.

They are a blessing and a curse. There is a voice on one of my shoulders saying that if I can’t fill every single one of those compartments, I’m failing as a homeowner. There is a voice on the other shoulder asking me why I have three utensil drawers and two drawers filled with silverware. I decided it was time to address this tug-of-war.

I started out by doing what everyone does when they are faced with a large dilemma – I Google-d it. I found a couple good sites of trustworthy info that made sense and seemed simple enough to follow. You can check them out here and here.

I considered dumping everything currently stored in the kitchen into the dining room and then reloading the cabinets in a more sensible way, but then I considered the fact that I’m probably not a complete failure and some things are probably already in their “best” place.

I started to get overwhelmed and considered throwing a temper tantrum, but instead I settled on playing with graph paper and highlighters. Nothing kills a temper tantrum like coloring, right? In all seriousness, I drew out a so-not-to-scale version of our kitchen and then cut out “inserts” for every drawer/cupboard so that I could play around with arrangement ideas until I was blue in the face happy.

Here is the diagram showing our current arrangement.

I apologize if you can't read the comments clearly. Nonetheless, it’s obvious that this arrangement can be improved upon. I plan to painstakingly go through every single item and determine what we need and don’t need any longer as well. Of course, I will share my progress as I muddle through this project. 

March is also the month I have set aside in my cleaning schedule to wash and polish all the kitchen cabinets so this will be a great time to do that chore as well. 

Do you have any tips for organizing a functional and efficient kitchen?