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Amber’s Home and Office Organizing Blog index

Kitchen Zones

Organizing the Kitchen into 6 Specific Areas

The kitchen is one of my most favorite rooms to organize. Kitchens are where all the action happens in a home and really has the most impact on the family. Organizing a kitchen to help you prepare, serve and enjoy meals together is at the top of my list. It’s well worth the effort and time to dig into each cabinet, clean out the old, and set up new “zones” to help keep it all organized. Without zones, loosing things is very easy, wasting food is a reality and lack of space is bound to become a problem.

So I like to start by clearing off the kitchen table, dining room table, or a large portion of the countertops. This will give us space to help sort and set up zones outside of the cabinets. As we empty and clean out the cabinets we toss what we don’t need or want and place the things we do want into a specific zone on that cleared surface. And yes, most people have pots and pans together, and cookie sheets and pizza pans together. There are obvious placements and pre set zones most of the time. But in every kitchen, there’s bound to be a few cabinets that are completely mixed, jam packed, or zone less and those are the cabinets we zero in on. Spices, Tupperware, and junk drawers are notorious for causing trouble in kitchens as well. Below are the basic six zones that I end up using and setting up in each kitchen. So as you begin to open up your kitchen cabinets and organize the contents, look to see if you have these specific zones grouped and set up.

 

1.Cooking: I view the cooking zone as anything that holds the food to cook it. This includes pots and pans as well as casserole or side dishes. 

2.Prepping: This zone includes all the small appliances, mixing bowls, measuring cups, cutting boards, and odd kitchen gadgets used to prep food so that it’s ready to cook. Examples include a mini food processor, nut grinder, etc. 

3.Baking: This area includes muffin tins, cheesecake pans, bundt pans, bread pan, round cake pans and just about anything that would hold something you bake in the oven.

4.Dishes: Here we have every day dishes such as plates and bowls and serving dishes serve food as the name implies. I like to keep the every day dishes separate from the serving dishes. Some families don’t entertain often or serve themselves right from the pot or casserole dish so in that case, we don’t need the serving dishes nearby. They can be stored elsewhere and brought out from time to time when they host a party.

5.Utensils and Silverware:  In this zone I see four areas we can break it down. If you don’t have four drawers, a couple of these may have to be combined but for organizing purposes keep these categories in mind while sorting through your silverware. First we have every day utensils including knives, forks, and spoons. They really deserve their own drawer space. Second, you’ll have serving pieces which includes oversized spoons, salad tongs, slotted spoons, and large meat forks to place on a meat platter. The third category is stovetop cooking. Many families prefer to store their cooking utensils on the counter in a utensil crock for easy access to flip, stir, and whisk food cooking on the stove. Finally, we need to think about the prepping utensils such as the potato peeler, cheese slicer, garlic press, corkscrew, etc. These aren’t necessarily used daily so these don’t need to take up space front and center.

6.Food: Now onto the food. I like to break food into these sections. 

• Snack- every family needs a snack shelf where chips, dried fruit, cookies, and candy land
• Drinks- drinks include tea, hot chocolate, coffee, Crystal Light, powered drinks, etc.
• Meals- staples to build a meal: taco shells, canned food, pasta, macaroni and cheese, rice, etc
• Breakfast- cereal, pancake mix, syrup, oatmeal, etc.
• Baking- baking powder, flour, sugar, powdered sugar, chocolate chips, premixed baking kits, brown sugar, vanilla
• Seasonings and Spices
• Oils, Vinegars and Sauces- these bottles are normally tall and do well on a turntable corner cabinet. Don’t forget to adjust to the tallest height. 

Which zone do you struggle with to keep or get organized?

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