It can be said that sufficient space and comfort are two of the most desirable qualities in a kitchen. Whether your home kitchen boasts a compact structure or an open environment, becoming knowledgeable about the things you can do to maximise your space and organise your kitchen appliances will only improve one of the most important rooms in the house.
Before getting into and deconstructing some of the most ideal ways of maximising space, convenience and even organisation, one question might come to mind. Why are space and convenience essential in the kitchen?
First of all, making sure you have adequate space in your kitchen will allow for a safer environment in a potentially hazardous room in the house. Evidently, leaving a large number of kitchen appliances on the counter and other parts of the room might cause breakage and spilling – especially when numerous individuals tend to enter the kitchen at the same time. Breaking and spilling objects will not only cost you money, but it can also be especially dangerous for babies and toddlers who are prone to accidents in these situations.
Organising your kitchen ingredients and appliances will also save you some time. As a homeowner, you’ve probably been in this stressful situation before. You have guests coming over after work. You want to impress them with the best possible cooking you can manage, but you just don’t have enough time. Storing your kitchen items in a neat and easily-accessible manner will spare you the extra time it takes to find the right seasoning, ingredient or utensil.
With these considerations in mind, we’ve compiled a list of 20 tips in maximising space and convenience in your kitchen – for you and your entire family.
Use Hooks to Hang Mugs
Whether you live for that energising cup of coffee in the morning or favour a calming green tea after work, a mug is a must-have item in the kitchen that most people enjoy to collect. Instead of filling up your kitchen cabinet with an endless selection of mugs that take up most of its space, hang your mugs on a hook by their handle. This will provide you with more space in your cabinets as well as a better way to store these items.
Ditch Containers for Glass Jars
While aesthetic packaging is undoubtedly hard to let go of, replacing your ingredients’ containers with glass jars is a better way to organise clearly mark out cooking items. Glass is also a much better friend to the environment than plastic is. Getting into the habit of storing your items in this type of container will get you used to making eco-friendly decisions. There isn’t much you can’t store in glass jars. Dry herbs, nuts, pasta, cookies, raisins – the options are endless.
Installing A Pan Rack
Similar to hooks for mugs, getting yourself a pan rack over your cooker will save you a lot of space pans occupy. It also adds a certain appeal to your kitchen. If you have low ceilings, consider installing it over the kitchen sink.
Don’t Forget Your Cabinet Doors
The inside of your cabinet doors is filled with storage possibilities. Adding hooks and slim racks to cabinet doors will provide you with more than enough space for the smallest kitchen items like lids, aluminium foil, measuring spoons, yolk separators and more.
Utilising Kitchen Corners
More often than not, the most efficient storage spaces will be right in front of us, without us noticing. Making use of free corners in your kitchen can be a good way to utilise space – especially if you’re trying to make every inch of your small kitchen count. Add in an extra shelf or two across both faces of the corner to store more bowls, cups jars and more. Indeed, corner shelving is becoming every small home owner’s ideal hack.
Declutter
Seems too obvious? You will find that the kitchen is one of the most cluttered, hoarding-prone rooms of a house. With everyone having to purchase and consume food on a daily basis, it’s not difficult to give in to the supreme food business marketing (or an insatiable appetite for flavour) by buying more food than necessary. Certain items that take long to expire are often left to dry out in a cabinet or fridge if bought in large quantities. Dedicate a day to decluttering your kitchen. Throw away any dried out or long-forgotten items you might have at the back and won’t plan on eating anyways. If plate sets and cutlery are what you don’t make use of in your kitchen, you can donate these items to help yourself as well as other people in need.
Invest in a Folding Kitchen Table
If you tend to eat your meals in the kitchen itself, you might find folding tables to be of good use – especially if your entire home is quite small. A foldable table can be a good space to prepare and eat food without taking up valuable floor space. It can also be a great idea of a makeshift desk you can tuck away at the end of your workday
Use a Cutlery Tray
Most of us resort to storing our forks, knives and spoons separately while leaving our larger utensils all in the same place. While separately storing your spatulas, whisks and kitchen tongs among other utensils will cost you more space, it sure is a great way to organise your utensils for some added comfort and convenience.
Have What You Use the Most Easily Accessible
Keep your everyday cooking appliances upfront and close to you. This might not save you hours worth of finding the right things, but it will surely impact you without you realising if you know at the back of your head that your cooking tools are right there in front of you. For example, you might want to keep your wooden spoons right next to the stove while storing your smoothie blender at the back of the cabinet.
Invest in a Wall Mount Grocery Bag Dispenser
Grocery bags can feel like some of the most tedious things to find the right place for in the kitchen. Stash your grocery bags in one neat and organised spot for easy access. A wall mount is especially convenient for homeowners in need of some extra space in the kitchen; the wall is often one of the most unused areas in the kitchen.
Add a Magnetic Knife Bar
If you happen to meticulously choose the right knife for the right cooking ingredient, this is the kitchen appliance for you. Knives are mainly stored in drawers or on counters, but installing a magnetic knife bar is sure to save you some space as well as to look charming above your counter.
Slide-Out Bin
Opting for a slide-out bin, which connects to a low cabinet and is simply pulled out with ease, is a great way to organise your kitchen. While you’ll be saving floor space, you’ll also be adding a hint of charm to your kitchen by hiding away a dirty-looking bin. This especially efficient for when you have guests coming over, and would like to put in that extra effort in keeping everything looking sharp and clean.
Label
This task will not only completely satisfy your organisational needs – it’s also fun! Labelling the items in your pantry will save you extra time in finding any items you might be struggling to find. Go ahead and dedicate a few hours to cut out some shapes in paper. Write ingredient names in bold black, colour or any quirky design to make your labels stand out. A good organisational trick to keep in mind is to keep the labelling consistent in order to avoid any type of mismatching in your kitchen.
Add a Basket to Cleaning Products
The storage space under your sink can easily get out of control once you start throwing in cleaning products, brushes and cloths haphazardly. It can be said that, once you organise your cleaning storage, you’ll feel better about reaching for a product under the sink if you know that you’re not going to be faced with a mess in the storage. Add a small basket to store your cleaning products in so to have a neat, tidy and easily-accessible area. The first items you should consider putting in your basket are the smallest ones that tend to get lost. This includes sponges, dishwater tabs, soap bars and more.
Tea Drawer
If you believe in finding a daily moment for a calming cup of tea, no matter the weather out there, this kitchen hack is just for you. Separate and sort out your multi-flavoured tea bags by getting your hands on a tea organiser, which is ideally best kept in a drawer.
Hanging Fruit
Utilise your ceiling by storing your fruit in a hanging fruit basket. While this is mainly just suitable for people whose ceilings aren’t extremely high, having a hanging fruit basket is an attractive way of adding a bit of decor in the kitchen. Hanging baskets will save you a bit of counter space that you’ll certainly find useful when you’re chopping up ingredients for cooking. Taking advantage of the vertical space available in your house is a different and ideal space-saver.
Get a Cart
Purchasing a small, light cart you can easily roll around near the kitchen is a good way of keeping your appliances in order. Carts normally contain around two or three stands on which you can put plates, dish rags, spoons and more. The best thing about these carts is that you can simply roll them out of the way whenever you see fit.
Organise the Fridge with Zones
No matter how spacious the inside of a fridge may be, people generally tend to get quite lazy with sorting through the ingredients. You will often find multiple tiny pileups of ingredients in many fridges, and the right way to fix this issue would be to organise the fridge by zones. Indeed, some areas of the fridge work better for certain items. Dairy products, meat, poultry and other perishable items are best kept on the lowest shelves and on the back where it’s the coolest. Items that are used often by the family should be kept at eye-level. This is not only a hack for convenience and easy-access, but it is also a smart way of making you more willing to stick to a healthy diet. By making it a point to store the larger sections of your refrigerator with healthy foods such as fruit and vegetables, you’ll be constantly exposed to a large portion of nutrient-packed items.
Fill a Blank Space with a Chalkboard
This is not only a creative way of decorating your kitchen. It can also be helpful in many ways. Including a chalkboard in the kitchen might get you to write your favourite quotes of inspiration or humour that you might want to have written down somewhere in your house. Parents can also use the chalkboard as a visible reminder of the kids’ house chores, by writing down the jobs they have to do to help out around the house. This will surely make it harder for the children’s cheeky “I forgot to” and “I didn’t know I had to” on occasion.
Make Use of the Oven
Think about it, how often do you actually use the oven? If you’re truly lacking storage space in your cabinets, consider keeping baking sheets, cooling racks and trays in your oven when you’re not using it to cook.
Now that you know exactly how you can organise and maximise the space in your kitchen, the next step is to have a look at our tried and trusted kitchen appliances that always satisfy our customers’ needs. We at V. Demajo take pride in providing a vast range of high-quality products for anyone at home.
Interested in finding out more? Have a look at our website.
