Organize This: Kitchen Cabinets

Now that we finally have all of our kitchen cabinets installed, I have been working on re-organizing our kitchen items to fill the new cabinets. I wanted to arrange things in a way that makes the most use of the space but also has items located in places that make sense for how I will use them.

One of the first set of cabinets I began organizing is the extra-tall cabinet on the right side of the kitchen that goes down to the counter and the cabinet beneath it under the window. I designated this area as kind of my dry goods baking center (with a few other items mixed in). Since this area has the largest stretch of counter space in the kitchen, I knew I would do my mixing, rolling, and putting-together-of-baked-goods here. So, I wanted most of these types of items gathered here.

The tall cabinet has 4 shelves, which I stacked with all kinds of handy items.

The bottom shelf is mostly filled with practical everyday stuff - cookbooks, my recipe box, and extra recipe cards are easy to reach for all the cooking and baking I do each day. I also stored my largest container, which is full of flour, on this shelf (it didn't fit on the other shelves because it was too tall). It acts as a sort of book-end and keeps the cookbooks from falling over. And then my little sugar container and salt and pepper set are also in here - for when I need a sprinkle of sugar on my cereal (shhh-don't tell) or need to add a dash of S&P to my plate of food. These are my grab-n-go items.

The 2nd shelf up contains the following: my set of canisters filled with all kinds of goods, another clear bin filled with sugar, a container of Swiss Miss Hot Cocoa, and some coffee filters and creamer.

And here's what the canisters contain...

The 2 largest have Brown Sugar and Powdered Sugar. Guess my brown sugar is getting a little low...

The 2 smaller canisters have coffee and tea bags. Hence I have the coffee filters, creamer, and hot cocoa mix stored on this shelf also. It's kind of a drinking and baking theme all in one. :)

Finally, the 3rd and 4th shelves contain other baking ingredients: baking powder, baking soda, salt, shortening, vanilla, chocolate chips... and baking mixes for brownies, cakes, muffins, etc...

You can see that I lined the 3rd shelf with shelf paper - just in case anything spills or leaks - I want to protect my cabinet shelves and keep things as neat as possible.

So, here is the total product. One big happy family.

Given the location of most of my baking ingredients, I figured it would make the most sense to store the items used to mix, measure, and bake the ingredients right below them in this drawer and cabinet combo.

The lower cabinet has a 1 shelf in the middle. I set my pans - cake pans, muffin tins, cooling racks, loaf pans etc - on this shelf. On the base of the cabinet, I have my mixing bowls, mixer, measuring cups, pie plates etc. Everything fit with ease and is easy to access.

In case you are wondering what that thing in the back of the cabinet is? Most of the old houses in Kenosha have an old iron milk holder where the milk man used to drop off the milk (it can be accessed from the outside of the house) and the owners could open it from the inside of the house. Cabinets didn't use to exist on this wall, but we added them. So, we cut out the back of the cabinet to fit around the milk holder since we didn't want to remove it.

The drawer of this cabinet contains a bunch of kitchen utensils - pretty much everything except silverware/serving-ware and some items I have specifically by the stove. The smaller items are in a large storage divider. The bigger and awkwardly shaped items - rolling pin, electric knife, meat mallet, masher etc - are just laid out in the drawer.

This was one of my favorite sections of the kitchen to put together. I haven't changed a thing. I can easily access everything when I need it. Each item has it's own little home. Just as it should be.