Kitchen organization is always an interesting topic. It seems everyone has their own ‘perfect’ way of doing things in their kitchen. Even then, there’s always one or two things that leave them feeling chaotic. When we downsized from our house to a smaller apartment, our kitchen space shrunk quite a bit. We found that having well-appointed solutions was the only way to make it all work.
Here are the items we can’t lie without. If you’re downsizing, rightsizing, relocating, or just in the middle of an organization project, we can’t recommend these items enough.
Expandable Drawer Organization
Kitchen organization should always, always begin with drawer organization. I can’t stress it enough. Safety first! No one should reach into a drawer filled with serving spoons, spatulas, and the random chef’s knife. That is a disaster (and a trip to the ER) waiting to happen. In my humble opinion.
Because we knew we would be relocating every year or so, we knew we needed drawer organization that was customizable to whatever drawer size we may encounter. This is what we came up with:
This is the OXO Good Grips Expandable Utensil Organizer. We have owned two of them, which speaks to how functional they are. We love them.
- The gray dividers adjust to accommodate all utensil shapes and sizes
- Dividers all you to organize more than one utensil in each compartment
- Larger compartments keep multiple utensils neatly stacked even when drawers are opening and closing.
This organizer allows us to keep all of our daily cutlery in one location and neatly organized. We can also keep those rarely used items such as serving spoons, or larger cooking utensils in a concise location; within easy reach, but minus the chaos.
As you can see from the photo, we can contain both table and tea spoons together, dinner and salad forks together, and dinner knives in one location.
Everything we need, and nothing we don’t.
Small Scale Cooking Utensils
I love to cook. It’s creative, and fun and – bonus – you get to eat a lot of yummy food! But I don’t love a drawer full of oversized, under utilized cooking utensils.
I’ve purchased my fair share of handy one-time gadgets in my lifetime. Each one promising to make my cooking life easier and faster…only to make cleanup a nightmare. I’m looking at you mandolin, and you garlic press, oh, and you too food processor! ACK!
These little beauties were all from Hobby Lobby. They are a seasonal item, and so, with the seasons, they come – and they go. I’ll link some similar ones from Amazon.
They are comfortable to hold in my hand, they are dishwasher safe, heat resistant to 500 degrees and stain resistant.
I love them – and even if we should ever upsize again – I’m 100% certain these will be a mainstay in my kitchen drawer forever. L-O-V-E.
While in the vein of small cooking utensils, these collapsable measuring cups are a dream come true!
They are also silicone, which means no more clinking around in the dishwasher. But the real winner is that they are collapsable – and therefore – stackable if you wish. I choose to file mine in the drawer. They have held up wonderfully for over a year, and they get daily use.
These are from Hobby Lobby as well, and as of right now, they are currently available on the HL website.
Customizable Drawer Organization
As much as I love the expandable kitchen organizer from OXO, sometimes you need something you can customize to fit multiple configurations. For that purpose, individual divider trays are the way to go. The ones pictured here were purchased as a set from a small store called PopShelf. They’re mostly in Southern states, so I’ll try to link something similar for you from Amazon.
The handy think about these little trays is that they are hard sided, but not too rigid. They have a little give to them, in case you need to squeeze them in to make them fit snugly.
The Little Extras
Two things have been absolute life-savers since we downsized to a small kitchen. I don’t think you need to have downsized, to live in a small space, or to even start fresh to experience the genius of these two items. Like the small-scale cooking utensils, these two things will be forever in my kitchen organization repertoire.
Silicone Muffin Cups
I love to bake muffins – but I loathe cleaning muffin tins. I’ve had the silicone ones that don’t rust; I’ve had the expensive ones. I’ve had, and hated every one of them.
Until I found these little babies. Silicone muffin cups. You can use them as muffin liners if you wish, but I simply place mine on a baking sheet and I’m off to the races. NOTHING sticks to them, they are so easy to clean, and they stack and store neatly. Oh! And they take up so much less space than a muffin tin that only gets used once in a blue moon.
Do you see them there? Hiding to the left of the OXO expandable drawer organizer? That’s a set of 12, my friend. Twelve muffin cups all stacked neatly.
I’ve linked them in case you’re jealous.
Collapsable Dish Drainer
My final item in this kitchen organization extravaganza is the collapsable dish drainer. They come in two sizes, and I’ve found them at Target, Was-Mart, and Amazon. The one I purchased for the apartment is the smaller size, measuring in at 14×12, and collapses to around 2 inches. They have an attached utensil strainer and drain board. I remove both of those items because I wash my utensils in the dish washer, and I set my drainer in the sink.
You can see how it fits nicely into the sink basin for easy rinsing, and air drying. When I’m ready to store it away, it fits neatly into this six-inch wide kitchen cabinet. The blue re-usable storage bag behind it is for scale representation. It’s small, folks. Absolute Genius!
Kitchen Organization for Small Spaces – or Any spaces.
As I started writing this article I considered how useful each of these items are to us since we’ve downsized. But as I continued writing, I realized how useful they could be for anyone, no matter what size kitchen they have. They are genius solutions, and have been life-changing for us. We love them, and hope you will too.
