Guest post from Diana of Saving by Making
If you’ve ever lived in a small house or worked in a small kitchen, you know there’s a learning curve to cooking and baking without creating a giant mess. You can cover every inch of counter space with dirty dishes just by making a batch of muffins!
Here are five simple ideas to make life in a small kitchen a bit easier:
1. Use vertical space effectively.
Use wire racks to double the capacity of a shelf. Items will also be easier to remove when they’re not all stacked on top of each other.
Magazine holders work well because they’re tall and narrow–they help use vertical space without being so big that you lose items at the bottom.
2. Clear Your Counters.
Instead of piling up the dirty dishes next to the sink, put them right into the dishwasher or the sink. It might take some adjustment, but clutter-wise, it’s better to have dishes in the sink and your countertops clear.
Wash and rinse dishes in one side of the sink and let them dry in the other side (consciously keep that side clean). Clutter stays off the counters and the mess is contained.
Implement once-a-week clearing. Ideally, you’d do this every night, but if you have young children, your evenings are probably somewhat unpredictable. Instead, choose one day a week when your goal is to have all extraneous items off of the kitchen counters.
3. Containerize.
Choose a container that’s able to hold all the items in a certain category (cooking utensils, sharp knives, table linens, dishcloths, etc.). Then use that container to limit the amount of items you can have in that category.
Don’t use containers that take up more space than the items themselves. Some baskets look beautiful but their shape wastes space. Look for straight-sided baskets and boxes to use available space efficiently.
4. Develop good habits.
Unload the dishwasher in the morning. Make this part of your morning routine and you’ll be free to add dirty dishes directly to the dishwasher throughout the day. Like the “touch it once” rule for paper, if you don’t deal with a dish immediately, you’ll shuffle it around multiple times before it gets washed.
Rinse and drip-dry. If a bowl, plate, or measuring cup only had dry ingredients on it, give it a quick rinse and let it dry in the clean side of your sink. Your dishwasher will be less crowded and you’ll have a smaller pile of dirty dishes.
Wash as you cook. If you make this a habit, you’ll be washing dishes in short spurts and they’ll never stare you in the face, just daring you to get started.
5. Reorganize Frequently.
During times when you bake a lot, can a lot, pack lunches a lot, or have lots of guests, be willing to rearrange things so that they’re easy to access.
When the system stops working, take time to reassess your system and see what needs to be changed.
How do you organize your small kitchen?
Diana is mom to one cute 4-month old and wife to world’s best husband. Besides washing dishes, folding laundry, feeding the baby, and playing the piano for church, she blogs at Saving by Making about saving time and money by making things at home.
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A testimony from Sylvia
