Keeping a Well Organized Kitchen

We all love our kitchens.  Well, many of us do enjoy it and consider our kitchen to be the possible favorite room in the house.  Right?  It's where we prepare our foods that are going to go into that man's stomach and we've all heard the expression that the way to a man's heart is through his belly.  Or something along those lines!

This is why we need a kitchen we can function in and to be able to know where everything is.  Some of us feel that to have a wonderful kitchen, we need to remodel.  Not everyone can afford to do this to the kitchen as it is usually one of the major rooms to remodel and usually costs well into the thousands if you are to have someone do it for you.

That's why millions of families have to make due with what they have.  But also, I will say it doesn't take a lot of cost if you want to remodel your kitchen on a budget.  You don't have to go fullblown into it either.  Maybe it's only going to need a few simple changes to fix up your kitchen.

Perhaps just a simple change of curtains would do it for you.  My Mom used to change her curtains in different rooms a few times out of the year changing in and out with the seasons.  

Or maybe it's a few new appliances you were waiting for and that's also all it is going to take.  I've had an aunt who always wanted to remodel her kitchen and other rooms in the home.  I would say that was her hobby.  It was always gorgeous and it was the envy of lots of other women.  One thing I always remember liking was she had a good sized container that would hold lots of garlic near her window by her sink. 

Keeps the Vampires away!!!  No Edward Cullen there!!!  Maybe I should ditch the garlic as I wouldn't mind Edward Cullen coming in and biting me!!!  Ha ha.

So anyway, you want your kitchen to be functioning.  Meaning, remodeling set aside, you need to have a kitchen you can operate in.

Keeping things organized is always the best place to start.  If your kitchen doesn't have a pantry, try to invent something sort of like one that you can consider your pantry.  Keep up with organizing your food in your cabinets, separating the different types of foods.  I hate it when I open up my food cabinets and I can't find my items.  I often find myself rearranging so I know where everything is.  I like to keep my pasta noodles together, my different flours on a different shelf and lots of my canned food on yet another shelf.  

I usually push to the back the canned food I know I am not going to touch right away.  I am the girl with just about every spice there could possibly be, however there's still a bunch I don't have of course.  I keep lots of them on several shelves and others in a good sized basket on my counter.

You want to keep your counters nice and neat as well.  Meaning get to washing your dishes before they majorly pile up.  That's what drags a kitchen down when company sees you haven't done your dirty dishes in more than days and green mold starts to invade and smell.  Clean them.

I like to have certain items pushed towards the back of my counters, like the popcorn kernels kept in a pretty glass jar with the duck on it.  One back from probably the 70's or 80's.  My Mom had one and so did her downstairs neighbor and once I got married, I found one of the same for me.

Go to yard sales to get the quick fix for your kitchen or Goodwill and there's always Walmart too if you are looking for certain things.  Yard sales are awesome and I can hardly wait for them to come.

I don't like to go to Walmart as much as I used to, but sometimes we really need something there.  I don't like all the crowds and lines that we come to expect when we go there. 

I love to have my Mom's china displayed on my counters, pretty vases, bowls, and other cool knick knacks.  I have one of those J.C. Penney square baskets that I put some things in and some pretty bowls or ceramic pan on top.  I like to rearrange my kitchen often.  It depends on what recipe I am doing and what I need for my food photography when preparing a dish that's going to go into the recipe book I plan to publish later with Kindle Publishing.

Always clean up after you are done cooking and baking.  Have your dishcloths handy always in reach for when you need them. 

Try to have a place for every pan you own, same with your dishes.  Keep it clean and fresh.

I know the one thing I am looking for to remodeling my kitchen is some sort of bookshelf or even better some sort of kitchen storage for one part of my kitchen near my windows.  Once I find it, I plan to store my extra pans and kitchen necessities on it and I'm going to decorate it.  I am also needing the top shelf of it for more good lighting for the food photography.  Which means my top shelf will be getting changed often, depending on my mood.

Keep the appliances or things you do not use on a regular basis in a spot where you don't currently use as much.  Try to always have some good counter space to work with.  I know this is sometimes hard for many as we often don't have enough space for everything.

Look at your counter space on a regular routine as perhaps some things do not need to be there.  Sometimes we want to have everything on our counters but by removing certain items it also frees up space to give us more room to work.

And of course most of us love to keep our cleaning supplies hidden in a cabinet underneath the sink.  Stick all things that should be covered up in one of those spaces.

Many of us love to be in our kitchens, but find it frustrating if we haven't kept up with the organizing.  Keep it fresh, simple as possible and full of abundance of good food to fill your hearth and home.

Jennifer Jo Fay

Copyrighted April 3, 2013

One of my new blue chenille knitted dish cloths I just listed for sale at Etsy.   For sale at $6 plus shipping.

http://jfaypaperdolls.etsy.com/

I love having a good pile of dish cloths of all sorts in my kitchen.