Organize Your Kitchen This Weekend!
The New Year brings with it all sorts of RESET opportunities, doesn’t it? Goal setting for your health, work aspirations, personal life and organizational aims seems to go hand-in-hand with new beginnings and new resolve. Here are some tips and tools from people like us, about reducing clutter in the kitchen and rethinking the number of things we don’t use, forget about, or let expire.
The Kon Mari Kitchen
The New Year began with Marie Kondo dropping a collection of organizing essentials at The Container Store. Kondo and her lifestyle brand, KonMari, brought her tools to the masses with a selection of Japanese-inspired drawer organizers, storage boxes, baskets and bins designed to contain clutter.
One that seems perfectly suited for the work-at-home crowd is the diagonal in-drawer organizer, made of bamboo. It seems counter intuitive, but brilliantly fits most kitchen and desk drawers, giving you visual and physical access to different categories of supplies, miscellany and essential items without having to fully extend the drawer. These seem a bit pricey but, hey, they’re a “renewable resource”!
The KonMari Kitchen declutter approach starts with the same principles as the clothes, papers, books and linen closet declutter and organizational methodology. First take everything out of a space – a cupboard, a pantry, under the sink or the junk and cutlery drawers. Lindsey’s Life’n’Style vlogger narrates her video for decluttering her own kitchen – mostly in fast motion – which is great if you’re time strapped or suffer from COVID-induced ADD.
Fast forward to 5:18 and imitate her process by pulling everything out and putting it to the KonMari test — toss anything that’s expired, you haven’t used in a LONG while, that doesn’t give you joy or you don’t know the purpose of. (Some of us have a few “what’s this?” parts and pieces that we think are important and belong to an appliance, tool, device or piece of furniture and we reserve the right to save those in a separate location, like the garage – clearly labeled – just in case it actually IS important!)
Lindsey vacuums out each cabinet and wipes down the insides with a green cleaner, as well as all the baskets/organizers. You don’t need the KonMari containers – Lindsey likely purchased these at the dollar store. Full disclosure — we’d have to label the baskets to remember how we organized the contents before returning them to the cabinet shelves. She clearly has a better memory!
Functional Organization
The Daily Dot illustrates with photos, links and prices additional tools that can help you organize the clutter you keep. As you work through what’s essential and what you love and can’t part with. Consider the anecdote about the sometime home chef who held onto a mandolin for 15 years – thinking she’d use it someday. It doesn’t take up THAT much space, but come on! If an appliance has sat unused for 15 years, find it a new home!
Alexandrea Garza published a video last year demonstrating her intention to keep her large kitchen functional. If you fast forward to 4:10 in, you’ll see the professional organizer she hired counsel Alexandrea about what to do, as well as why and how to do it – like organizing around the dishwasher, and the tools that help keep drawers in order.
Tammy Ferns demonstrates how to minimalize and simplify kitchen items and claims having less stuff (clutter) makes her happier. If that sounds like you – watch how she declutters her pantry, and then tackles her kitchen cabinets.
Tammy prefers containers she can see through so that things aren’t forgotten. (Remember labels?) She chose dollar store glass containers and eliminated LOTS of coffee mugs and cups by reasoning how many she truly needs. Her videos are fast motion, also, and after some explanation you can watch her determine her favorites and sort out her expendales and mismatched pieces.
Final Tips from the Experts
HGTV advises aspiring organizers to toss any food storage container that is permanently stained, doesn’t seal or has cracks. THEY SAY to make an effort to replace all your plastic with glass by the end of the year. More helpful hints and tips will inform your decisions about keeping and tossing.
House Beautiful showcases 31 “genius products” for kitchen organization from a cookware organizer and narrow cutlery tray, to chrome pull-out cabinet drawers and airtight storage containers. No more cardboard boxes!
Starting Fresh in Colliers Hill
The kitchens in the new homes that dot the master-planned community of Colliers Hillare designed with plenty of storage and options for order. Whether in the paired offerings built by KB Home, or any of the single-family floor plans from Century Communities and Richmond American Homes. Life is better on the Hill, so many more options at this fast-growing new home community in Northern Colorado! Check out the amenities and the beautiful model homes from three top Colorado builders. It’s still a great time to buy with rates still so low and lots of possibilities — from the high $300s.
