Spring has sprung and you know what that means: SPRING CLEANING TIME! Ok, that doesn't necessarily equate for all of us, but since we have a little "extra" time at home right now, let's take advantage! This is a great opportunity to really dive deep into your Kitchen purging, organizing and cleaning. We are going to help you out a bit and break down the steps and share some tricks you can use to organize your Kitchen. There are really 3 major steps in properly doing this and this is why it's so daunting. We recommend reading through everything and then starting this at a point that you know you can devote a good few hours on this project and work all the way through until the end! Depending on how "organized" you typically keep your Kitchen you may be able to bypass some of the suggestions below. For instance, before opening the Cabinet Studio 25 years ago, mom was a top Tupperware manager, so as you can imagine, our Kitchen is pretty organized already, and yet she still finds she's purging every year too. The nice thing is, is that once you take the time to do this really well the first time, it's typically easy to keep up. The problem most people have with this is that we start Spring Cleaning and organizing our Kitchen with the best of intentions but it becomes so overwhelming that we don't continue to a final organized finish, and then we just give up and somehow have more "junk drawers" than when we first began. So, we highly recommend giving yourself the permission and time to work through each step and push through until the end making sure every item has a new "home"!
sTEP ONE: exploration / inventory check This step is the most liberating part and the most eye-opening. We recommend emptying all of your kitchen cabinets into piles of "like" items. You will probably have to use other landing surfaces than just your Kitchen countertops. You may need to move onto the dining room table and possibly bring other tables into close proximity. Tip: If you need more space you can vacuum up the floor and lay sheets down to place items on the floor as well. The goal here is to gather all similar items together into separate piles. i.e. dishes, pots, pans, utencils, cutlery, empty tupperware/rubbermaid, linens, spices, dry goods, tin foil/wax papers, microwave dishes etc. This is not the time to be doing anything but putting everything in piles. Don't judge, don't purge, don't clean, just get everything out and put together with similar items. Also, make a pile of items that don't belong in the Kitchen. Stay focused. Don't get sidetracked by putting those items away, just put them in a pile to tend to when you are all done the rest of the Kitchen. By removing everything from the cabinetry this will do two things:
step two: deep cleanYou want to clean all of your cabinets right after everything is empty that way you can let them dry completely while you are purging and organizing the items that will be put back.
You will want to clean the face and back of the doors and all interiors and shelves. Some of the areas you want to pay extra attention to would be around your handles and around your stove. Note: if you have shelf liners that you would like to use, put them on after everything has been completely dried. This is not necessary, so if you don't have liners, please don't go out to buy them. #stayathome step 3a: pUrgeThis will take some real thought and time, but this is the essential part of the whole process that will really make your kitchen function the way you want it to. Let's get back to the piles you made. Go through one pile at a time and look at each item and decide what to keep, what to donate and what to store somewhere else in the house. Make an area (or a box) designated for donations and another for things to be recycled. Questions to ask yourself:
STEP 3B: organizeYou want to play around with the space you have and decide where it makes most sense to put each item. Sure you may have "always" put your cups and glasses in the same cabinet, but is that really the best cabinet for them? Be open to switching things up for better flow and function! Two things to keep in mind when choosing where to place your items.
Tip: You could also use post-it notes if you want at the beginning of this process to label where you will put all of your "piles" away. What this will do is give you a layout of where everything will belong but if you find you need to switch up cabinets half way through, it's just a matter of moving the post-it rather than all of the contents. Once you know exactly where you want each item. Now it's time to put them away.
We hope this has helped motivate you to kickstart your spring cleaning in your Kitchen. We would love to see your progress. You can email us or hop on over to our social pages and share your new and improved space! Also, if you have any tips and tricks that work for you, please share them with us too! Until next time, make it a happy and healthy day!
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