Arranging the Kitchen: Food Prep Zone

I started implementing my new kitchen organization plan and I can’t tell you how excited I am. Maybe it’s silly to get excited over arranging a kitchen. Just call me silly.

I completed the food prep zone first. Remember this?

Here’s what I did:

1.) Empty all the cabinets and drawers in this zone.

I took everything out and piled it on the kitchen table and on other parts of the counter in the kitchen. 

2.) Clear off the counter.

I cleared everything off the counter. If it belonged in another room, I set it in that room to take care of later. If it was something that didn’t really have a home, I added it to the kitchen table pile.

3.) Vacuum drawers and cabinets.

I thought it’d be easier to vacuum up all the crumbs and nonsense that had accumulated instead of trying to wipe it all out with a sponge. I used the hose attachment on our vacuum and went through each cabinet and drawer.

4.) Clean counters.

I sprayed down the counters with an all-purpose cleaner and wiped them down really well. I got in all the corners, scraped off any dried on spills, etc. 

5.) Wipe out drawers and cabinets.

With the drawers and cabinets vacuumed, I just ran a sponge through each one to pick up any remaining crumbs or dried spills. 

6.) Polish drawers and cabinets.

One of the items on my cleaning list this month is to wipe down all of the kitchen cabinets. This hasn’t been done since we moved in. (Yuck). I figured it’d be easiest to do this as I reorganize each zone. I just used a sponge dunked in hot soapy water to wipe down the faces of all the cabinets and drawers. Then I went over them with some furniture polish to make them shine.

7.) Load cabinets.

Referring to my diagram, I loaded the cabinets back up. The pots and pans went back where they were originally. I purged out two pans that I never use and rearranged where each one went. I felt it was easiest to store the lids right on the pans rather than have them in a separate rack.

The next cabinet now houses all of my Pyrex baking dishes and cutting boards. I picked up a file folder organizer at the thrift store for $1 and put my cutting boards and baking lids in that. Then each dish got its own space in the cabinet so they are easy to get to when I need them.

The next cabinet holds our two Pyrex carrying cases and a basket of serving utensils. I mentioned earlier that we have formal serving utensils we hardly ever use. I picked up a basket at the thrift store as well (for $2) and lined it with an old place mat. I stashed the utensils in there and covered it with a second place mat to protect them from dust, etc. Now, when I need them, I can just pull out the basket and get what I want. But in the mean time, they aren’t taking up space in our daily drawers.

The last two cabinets hold our roasting pan, wok and steamer, and grilling supplies. I’d really like to move the grilling supplies closer to the door that accesses the deck. I’m still brainstorming a solution for that move though, so for now, they remain here.

8.) Load drawers

Next, I moved on to the drawers. Previously we had two drawers of silverware. One drawer held the “nice” silverware we received as wedding gifts. The other drawer held our combined mix-matched collection of silverware we both brought when we moved in. I purged out some of the older stuff and combined the rest into one organizer. 

We also got a knife block with some really great knives for our wedding. I love the knives but hate the gigantic block taking up so much space on the counter. In addition, there isn’t a good place to put the block on this part of the counter so it sits behind me when I’m prepping food and makes things a bit more complicated. That being said, I lined a drawer with some rubber shelf liner and laid our knives in there. I added a small plastic bin to hold our steak knives separately. I’m not sure if this is a good solution or one that I will keep, but I’m going to test it out for a bit before deciding.

The last two drawers are our utensils; things like vegetable peelers, cheese slicers, pizza cutter, corkscrew, garlic peeler, etc. This stuff did consume three drawers but I purged out a few things and then rearranged the remaining items to get it down to two. I labeled the drawer organizers with some washi tape and a sharpie in hope that this will help us keep things how they are now – organized and easy to find.

The last drawer is labeled junk on my diagram but it holds important items like a cup of pens and some pads of paper and our daily vitamins and supplements.

9.) Add items back to counter.

Most of the items that were on the counter really belonged somewhere else so I moved them. The remaining items got stashed in a teal bin that was once in the entryway. It’s my goal on our new cleaning schedule to clean the counter of clutter each night so hopefully I am able to do that.

10.) Access the situation.

Things can sometimes look differently on paper than in reality, so when I was finished loading everything back in, I just took a step back and thought about how it looked and flowed. Without using the kitchen in this new arrangement, it’s hard to say what will work and what won’t, but all in all I like how it is. 

It feels clean, organized and stream lined. Until I turn around and see I still have two more zones to go! I’d like to add some sort of décor to the counter now that it’s so bare. I was planning to store my recipe books there but I didn’t like the look and feel when I tried that out. It’s all about trial and error in organizing. We’ll see what happens as I go. 

I am hoping to get to the next two zones done in the next couple weeks. I plan to take the same approach but will share those processes as I go.