How to Easily Organise Your Kitchen for Christmas
Inside: How to organise your kitchen for Christmas so you are ready for the festive season and your kitchen can handle the extra workload!
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I don’t know about you, but our kitchen gets a lot of use. With four adults in the house, three of whom are here most all of the time, there’s plenty of demand on it. And while it’s a good size, that space quickly vanishes!
This means if you don’t keep on top of organising your kitchen, things get out of control. With Christmas around the corner and all that extra cooking, out of control can quickly become a nightmare. So now is a brilliant time to look at how to organise your kitchen for Christmas – and enjoy it well into the New Year and beyond.
Why organise your kitchen for Christmas?
Christmas might not seem the typical time to spring clean and sort your kitchen, but it does make sense to do it as this season approaches. For starters, it is often a busy time of year with more commitments than normal and this means that you don’t get jobs done around the house as often as normal. Get ahead, cut the stress.
Christmas is often a time when there’s more cooking and higher demands on the kitchen. You don’t want to spend half an hour looking for a pot or a dish because everything has slowly moved from where you put it during the year (been there, done that). So it is a prime time to get organised.
You might have more visitors during the Christmas time and let’s face it, we all like things to look nice when people come around. Or maybe you are going away to visit family over the festive period – you want a nice, smart kitchen when you come back.
Basic kitchen organisation tips
Before you can do anything dramatic in terms of trying to organise your kitchen, arm yourself with some good basic tips to help you prepare. This apply whether you are looking to organise your kitchen for Christmas or just general kitchen organisation sessions.
Make use of wall space
Size up that wall with it’s one pretty picture on it – can it be better used? Most kitchens have wall cupboards but there is often still space left over that can be put to better use.
This is prime territory to hang things for easy access as long as they don’t block off access to the cupboards. Even something as simple as a towel rail and somewhere to hang your apron can be beneficial. Just ensure they aren’t hanging too near the cooker – fire risk!!
Look at the parts to start with
If things have got a little out of hand, don’t stand back and look at the whole. Instead start with one part of the kitchen and see what needs to be done. Maybe you want to reorder the dry goods cupboard or sort out the refrigerator. Write a list of things to do and work through them so the job doesn’t seem as overwhelming.
Think about frequency of use
As you plan and organise, think about the frequency of use for item. Does it come out once or twice a year? If so, can it be stored somewhere other than the kitchen, so you can get at it when needed but not in the main cupboards? On the turn side do you have something in the utility room that you have to fetch every day – can you make a space in the kitchen for it and save your legs?
Organise your utensils
I find two thing with utensils in our kitchen – either they vanish, or they multiply. I still never found that turner that I used nearly every day but vanished a few months ago. But we seem to have an excessive number of small spoons!
Grading your utensils by that frequency of use is a good way to get them under control. We have three main places for utensils, although hubby never quite remembers which goes where and a periodical sort is needed.
Where what goes
The main place is in the two kitchen drawers. One is for the everyday knives, forks and spoons we use for meals. The other drawer is for the everyday utensils like stirring spoons, turners, ladles and such. We also have a pot on the kitchen bench where the most commonly used utensils are placed including the kitchen scissors and the silicone spoons.
We also have a container in the utility room for those occasional use things. You know the pickled onion spoon that was too cute to resist? Or the melon ball tool? Things that are worth keeping because you occasionally use them but that don’t rate space in the kitchen drawers or utensils pot.
Other ideas
Cutlery baskets are another idea to help organise if you don’t have drawer space. You can even attach them to the wall and put little labels on to say what goes where. You may need to clean then periodically as the natural kitchen mess could cling to them if they are exposed.
A fun idea is a large pegboard where you can pin utensils. You could put it near the stove and add hooks for things to hang on. It can even be painted fun colours to make it a feature as well as a practical benefit.
DIY ways to organise pots and pans
Ah, pans. Got to have them, got to store them. But they are a real pain! We even have some of those nifty Tefal ones with detachable handles and while they are better, it can still be a bit trying, getting everything into the shelf space. But there are some interesting ideas to try out to DIY organise your pots and pans.
Paper plates
We have these felt star things that sit between the pans and stop the rough base scratching the non-stick coating of the next one. But a cool DIY idea is to use paper plates instead. When they start to look a bit shabby, throw them into the recycling and use a new one.
Cabinet dividers
We don’t have deep cabinets for this but if you do, making your own dividers is easy enough. Cut some wood into the side of the pots and pans and make sure you can fit them into the cupboard. Then you can use each section for a stack of pans and nothing bashes into each other.
Cabinet hooks
We have some of these on a rail on the door for hand towels and stuff. But if you have a bit of wall space, this is a great solution for pans. Each pan can hand from the hold in the end of the handle that the majority of them have, one per hook. Instant access and space saved in the cupboard.
If you aren’t a DIY fan but want to add some space, you can also buy ready made sliding storage racks. Just measure your cupboard and find the right size then you can easily attach them to the sides. These slide out to access the stuff on them and makes one cupboard into two or more spaces.
Unclutter your counters
If there’s one thing that makes your kitchen look disorganised, it is too much stuff on the counters. We have this problem, added to the fact that the cats like to sit on the sink unit bench in the sun. so one of the big jobs when it comes to organising your kitchen is definitely to look at the status of your worktops. Follow this step by step process
- Work out what needs to stay – can you put it somewhere else and still access it when you need? Are there things on the counters that don’t even belong in the kitchen like the mail (or the cat, but hey)
- Store unused appliances elsewhere – that waffle maker may look cute but if you only use it once a month, put it in a cupboard or somewhere other than sitting on the bench. Make sure the only stuff on the bench are appliances you need daily
- Get some pots for utensils – we have a stylish Joseph Joseph pot on the bench that holds a variety of utensils, knives and other little bits that we use frequently. Something like this instantly tidies up the bench
- Find boxes for stuff – if you need to keep the latest mail in the kitchen, then get a nice box for it. This looks tidier and anyone visiting over Christmas can’t peep at your last electricity bill.
- Keep fruit in a fruit bowl – fruit bowls look nice but also stop fruit rolling off the bench, getting bashed and reducing its lifespan. So have a space for a fruit bowl and make sure it is used.
Keep your food cupboards in order
The final piece of the puzzle in organising your kitchen for Christmas is to take a hard look at your food cupboards. If you are like us, there will be at least one tin or packet that is a year or two out of date hiding in the back corner. Or you may find some long forgotten treat you can use over the festive period.
Take out the content of each cupboard, one at a time and see what is in them. Look at those expiry dates and be realistic – will you use the food before the expiry date? We recently donated some tins that had a few months left on them because weren’t going to get them used but someone else might.
If you store cans in a drawer and look down at them, it is a guessing game what it is inside them. So label the top of the tins to make it easy to spot things and not have to pull everything out every meal time.
Remember that not all tins need to be in cupboards. You can get nice storage boxes and store them in a pantry, utility room or elsewhere – just pop a label on the front to remind you what the content of the box is.
Store those open food packets in boxes – you know the ones I mean. Pasta, rice, couscous, that kind of thing. They are dry and don’t go off, but it is more hygienic to have them in boxes and less likely for them to spill!
Organise your kitchen for Christmas with success
These are some of the ideas I’ve found and even used myself to help organise your kitchen. Whether you have a small, medium or large one, you can always benefit from some organisation. And with the busy festive season coming, you will be super thankful that you have done it in plenty of time!
What’s your favourite kitchen organisation tip? Or a hack you have discovered to keep on top of stuff? Pop it in the comments below!
