A kitchen is one of the most used rooms in a home.
For this reason, the state and orderliness of a kitchen depict the weight you give to the general order of every room in your home.
Among the areas that should be properly arranged in the kitchen are the kitchen drawers.
As such, while arranging your kitchen, you may wonder:
What Should You Keep In The Kitchen Drawers?
Well, you can put literally anything used in the kitchen inside the drawers. From the utensils, tools, dish towels, hot pads, plastic containers, funnels, strainers, colanders, glass kitchenware, pots, lids, pans, skillets, and so much more, most kitchenware is designed to be able to go into drawers with no issues.
See Also: Should You Put Hardware on Fake Drawers?
However, considering that no one enjoys the feeling of grasping several things in a crowded and overstuffed drawer before getting the exact thing they need, it is a good idea to designate specific drawers for individual elements you want to keep.
You can also put canned products, dry goods, and some dry snacks in the kitchen drawers.
When it comes to organizing your kitchen, it greatly depends on the number of things you have and the size of the drawer.
Some wide and deep drawers can store large pans, pots, and large bowls.
Another great issue of enhancing order in a kitchen is how you organize it. This article will cover some of the steps and tips to organize a kitchen drawer.
How To Arrange A Kitchen Drawer
You need to identify the things you have and wish to keep them inside the drawers.
Depending on how you want to organize your kitchen and whether things you want to keep in drawers, you can follow these simple steps.
1. Remove All The Disorganized Stuff From The Drawer
Emptying the drawers is an essential starting point to cleaning and organizing your kitchen drawers.
Empty the drawers, then dump anything that is broken and donate whatever you haven’t used for some years.
This will leave you with a few commonly used items that you can now arrange to keep.
If you have little drawer space, it’s actually the right time to keenly assess and keep away some items.
For example, if you have a lot of spoons or spatulas, you can keep some in the cupboards and just leave a few in the drawers.
2. Have A Spot For Everything
After cleaning the drawers, you should now identify which position suits each item you want to keep in the drawers.
For instance, pans can be placed at the lower drawer while spoons are placed at the top drawers.
You also need to identify the number of cutlery you need to keep in the drawers and slot a more convenient position to keep them.
For enhanced convenience, always put the lighter and most used utensils at the top part, and the heavy and rarely used utensils should be put at the lower drawers.
The idea is to identify the most convenient position for each item.
3. Measure And Shop For Drawer Organizers
Before arranging utensils in a drawer, it is a good idea to measure portions within the drawer and purchase drawer dividers.
Dividers help organize kitchen drawers while ensuring you utilize each space optimally.
Using the dividers, portion your drawers such that the things you want to keep in drawers have enough space.
4. Organize Your Drawers
Put similar utensils and items in a single portion for easy identification.
Even after using, washing, and drying the utensils, ensure you return them to a specific place; always avoid mixing.
The moment you start mixing spoons with forks and knives, you will have disorganized the entire drawer and increased the chances of getting hurt when searching for something from the drawer.
Seven Tips For Organizing Kitchen Drawers
Organizing a kitchen drawer may be simple but quite stressful if you need to have a unique design that is pleasing and convenient to you as you cook. Here are a few tips to consider.
1. Think Outside The Box
Arranging utensils in a cupboard is seen as old-fashioned, but truthfully, there are some that fit in the cupboard, while others are best kept in a drawer near the stove or sink.
There is a plethora of storage ideas and solutions for drawers; therefore, giving an expanded and wider thought to such ideas gives you a strong start base when organizing the drawers.
Start by clearing and cleaning your drawers before organizing them, then try to implement your idea.
The good thing with organizing your kitchen is that you can always interchange items or adopt what makes your kitchen pleasing.
2. Declutter And Clean
You may have been storing so much in the kitchen, and you haven’t realized because of the disorder in your drawers, cabinets, and cupboards.
For the best result when organizing your drawers and kitchen as a whole, remove everything and dump some, give away others, store the rarely used items in a cupboard, and you will remain with a few commonly used items in the kitchen.
Decluttering helps you find extra handy space to use, especially if your kitchen is small.
3. Partition The Drawer To Suit Your Working Space
Think of how you use your kitchen and position the drawers as appropriately as possible.
For example, you may want to store pans and utensils near the range or stove and glassware in the kitchen drawers that are at the topmost.
Keep cutlery in the drawers away from the cooking space and create adequate working space to make your kitchen experience awesome.
4. Leave Deep Drawers To Pots And Pans
If you have a wide drawer, it makes perfect sense to store all the pots and pans inside such drawers.
Opening and picking a pan from a wide space is easy and convenient.
You won’t expose the other unused pans and pots to little dust that can be found in the kitchen, especially if you use the pots and pans every day.
The graduated drawers are nice options for storing cooking pots lids at the top and storing the wide pots at the bottom drawers that are wider and deeper.
Do not stack pots because stacking increases the risk of scratching and breaking the pots every time you open or close the drawer.
You can also use internal pan racks to help you organize the deep, wide drawers neatly and easily get access to items in the drawer.
If you must stack pans, then buy pan protectors for every pan to help reduce friction and scratching of the pans.
5. Divide Up The Drawer
If you are organizing shallow drawers, invest in drawer dividers to help you handle the stress of rummaging through utensils.
Measure the inner dimensions of each drawer and buy dividers of similar dimensions.
Buy enough dividers to help maximize the drawer space. Categorize the drawer by slowing space for different items.
Dividers help you separate knives, cutlery, baking tools, spoons, and peelers into separate sections.
Use diagonal partitions to store rolling pins, salad servers, and long wooden spoons.
6. Keep Food Storage Clear
Decant dried food in transparent cans if they will be going into the drawers.
Transparent containers are the best for storage because you can easily identify the different food and dried ingredients and see when essentials are running out.
Arrange in regular order not to mess them up and knock items when opening and closing the drawers.
Everything you take out of the drawer should be returned immediately after being used.
Do not stack food cans on the cooker top after taking them out of the drawer because that contributes to the disorder.
7. Do Not Overfill
If the drawers are small, you might think that overfilling them is the only option you have.
Over-filling is not a good option, especially if you wish to have a kitchen that is spacious and conducive to preparing tasty meals.
You can also store some items in other storage places other than the drawer.
The cupboard is not an old storage space as you might think.
It is still efficient in the modern days and keeping excess utensils in the cupboard is also a good idea.
Conclusion
A kitchen drawer can hold literally everything in the kitchen.
For efficiency and optimal convenience, consider the above tips and arrange your drawers to hold as much as possible.
Related
References
https://www.homesandgardens.com/kitchens/how-to-organize-kitchen-drawers