How to Rearrange Your Kitchen Cabinets

In a kitchen, it’s important to have your cabinets filled and arranged in the handiest possible way. Sometimes you can live in your home for a number of years before realizing that things aren’t stored in the most obvious spots.

See also: How to Organize Your Kitchen

If you find that you’re constantly bending down to get dishes you use all the time or having to reach to the back of the cabinets for your favorite pot, maybe it’s time to rearrange your kitchen cabinets to make your daily kitchen time a little easier. I recently helped a friend with this project in her house. Here’s what we did:

• Take stock and make notes: Before removing everything from your cabinets, go through each cabinet individually and notate what’s working and what isn’t. Maybe the items stored in a cabinet are in the best spot in the kitchen but the items themselves need to be reorganized. Other kitchen items may need to be relocated.

• Remove and relocate: Put things where they make sense. Glasses and coffee cups should be near the refrigerator. Why walk all the way across the kitchen to get a cup? We created a beverage station in her cabinets. The coffee maker and espresso machine are on the counter with the coffee cups, coffees, filters, cups, and glasses all in the cabinets above. Now, that makes sense!

Before, all her food storage containers were stored in a lower cabinet that required bending down and reaching back to find the correct container. Using these storage containers is a daily occurrence so it made sense to move these to an upper cabinet that doesn’t require bending, stooping, and digging around. 

We moved all small appliances to the lower cabinet the containers were previously  in. Regularly used appliances are in the front where it’s easy to grab and less used items are in the back.

• Sort and get rid of stuff: Cleaning out your kitchen cabinets is a good exercise in deciding what you no longer need. Those dusty glasses stuck in the back corner of the top cabinet probably can go. If you haven’t used something in over a year, donate it or toss it. Once the extra stuff is gone, reorganizing cabinets will be much easier.

Storage containers before Storage containers after

• Label new locations: Once everything is loaded back into the cabinets, be sure to give a temporary post-it note label to any newly located items. It will cause less frustration for you and your family until everyone’s used to where things now go.

Be sure to keep your neat, organized cabinets…well, neat and organized. Take those few extra seconds when putting things away to keep your kitchen tidy. You’ll be happy you did!

For more tips on organizing your home to suit your needs, check out quickanddirtytips.com/house-home/organization.