Kitchen cabinets are where most of our kitchen supplies and food are stored. They are often messy, cluttered, and complicated to keep organized.

Keeping your cabinet contents neat and organized can be challenging, especially when other family members only sometimes put things back where they belong. 

Use the Back of the Cabinet

Whether your kitchen cabinets look like they have to work with less-than-ideal cabinet interiors, plenty of solutions can make them more useful. There are cabinet risers, bins, dividers, and more that can add value to your space.

The key is to think strategically about what goes where. Heavy items like pots and pans should be stored in lower cabinets closer to the stove where you do most of your food prep, while tupperware containers and other food storage can be kept in upper cabinets.

For cabinets with flat items like serving trays and baking sheets, a simple tray divider can help you find them quickly instead of stacking them horizontally, making it difficult to see what’s in the back.

Use the Tops of Your Cabinets

Make the most of your multipurpose storage cabinet with simple, clever organizational tricks. Store daily utensils in a hanging utensil holder or drawer organizers, and keep things like cookbooks in a designated spot over the oven.

Put heavy stuff in the bottom of your cupboards and lighter trinkets on the upper shelves. Also, try nesting pots together or adding a rack to store baking sheets vertically to double the storage space.

Keep track of the items you store by keeping like items together. This will help you maintain your kitchen’s organization over time. Add stick-on hooks to the inside of a cabinet door to hang things like measuring cups and spoons, or use a hanging spice jar with labels for easy access.

Use the Bottoms of Your Cabinets

If you’re prone to knocking items over from your cabinets, line all your cabinet shelves bottoms with heavy-duty, water-resistant shelf paper. It’s easily wipeable in the event of a spill. Also, consider dividing cabinets by item type, like putting all your drinking glasses and coffee mugs in one cabinet and storing your wine glasses elsewhere.

Flat items like cutting boards, cooling racks, and muffin tins can take up valuable real estate on bottom shelves. Installing a vertical tray divider in a base cabinet creates more storage space and makes it easier to access these items.

Hanging items like measuring cups and spatulas inside cabinet doors saves kitchen drawer space and keeps them visible. You can also install a pegboard to hold hanging tools and make the most of empty wall space.

Use the Sides of Your Cabinets

Your kitchen is a busy place. It’s a place that has to be set up to accommodate your daily schedule, from the frantic rush to make coffee in the morning to hosting dinner and drinks with friends on the weekends.

Kitchen organizers can help you stay organized. Whether you’re adding hooks to the back of your cabinet doors for holding foil and parchment paper or installing a shelf above your sink for storing sponges, dish towels, and more, these small touches can make a big difference when it comes to keeping your kitchen in tip-top shape.

Organize your cabinets with solutions that are built for the way you work. Using the tips above will keep your kitchen feeling clean, streamlined, and customized to how you use it.

Use the Tops of Your Countertops

Clutter breeds quickly on kitchen countertops, even when you do your best to keep it at bay. However, a few strategic kitchen counter organization tricks can help free up valuable real estate and make meal prep more accessible and enjoyable.

For example, using a wire basket or a stackable storage container on a counter is an easy and effective way to hold small items such as wooden spoons or spatulas often used while cooking. Similarly, using clear glass jars to store utensils or ingredients is an innovative and attractive solution.

Displaying cookbooks upright in a decorative holder is another simple and stylish solution. Arranging books by type (like dessert or breakfast recipes) and even color-coding them can make your cookbook collection feel like a piece of decor rather than a clutter-prone surface.