There are oodles of ways to add some organization to your kitchen. For me, the most effective way to save time and energy in the kitchen is having zones. Taking a little time to organize like items together is such an effective way to simplify your prep and clean up time. My favorite kitchen zones?
The dishwasher zone – easy access and put-away-ability is the key to this zone. Dish soap, silverware, storage containers, dish towels, and dishes. I can stand in one place to empty and load the dishwasher. Nice and easy.
The baking zone – baking supplies, flour + sugars, stand mixer, spices, cookbook holder all at the ready make a great baking zone.
The coffee zone – having mugs near the coffee pot is a simple and quick fix to create a mini zone in your kitchen.
Do you have zones in your kitchen? What’s your most effective zone? Is there a zone that you could implement today?
Click here to see all the posts in this series.
New here?
You can like me on Facebook (and for a Facebook Fan Freebie) and/or Twitter for daily reminders in your feed. If you’re a Pinterest-er, you can follow me here. And if you haven’t subscribed to posts in your inbox – just go to the little white box on the sidebar and enter your email address.
So what about when your kitchen is not set up in a way that is condusive to zones? Mine is not really at all!
While I’ve never divided my kitchen into zones consciously, I have done this just by streamlining my work process and keeping things close at hand. When I stand at the sink and do dishes, my dishtowels are directly to the left of the sink for easy access in the small drawer. My dish drying towels are to the right in the opposite drawer. Dishes are in the closest cabinets for easy put away.
All of my spices are above the stove and the pot holders as well.
I just love things to be as easy as possible making things more streamlined! Why put the hotpads over by the sink?
Great article!
I do have zones but right now they aren’t working as well as I would like. Using your post as inspiration, I need to rethink things. You see, we just renovated our kitchen and the new cabinets (which are wonderful) are different than what I was used to. Learning new ways!
I have multiple zones in the kitchen as well – baking zone (which needs to be purged and re-organized), breakfast zone (coffee maker, travel cups,toaster and bread box), dishwashing zone and the command center. You have inspired me to clean up the baking zone this weekend.
Our kitchen is too tiny!
But I hope that when we move to a larger house in a few years, I will be able to do this.
I have a small kitchen also, and like you, I hope to someday have a large enough kitchen to break it into zones.
I am getting a new countertop and refacing the kitchen cabinets. I am wondering what kind of countertop you have and how you like it. There are so many out there and I want to be happy with what I pick. I am so thankful for your blog. I have been inspired to organize and de-clutter. It is slow going but slow and steady wins the race! I can definitely see progress and my daughter has been teasing me about always organizing something. It is a very freeing feeling!! Thanks alot!
Hi Cindi! I’m so happy that you’ve been inspired
I have a laminate countertop and truth be told if I could replace it tomorrow I would. I love granite countertops and would snag one of those if I could. Our countertop is a higher end laminate so most people think it’s granite until they touch it realized it isn’t cold to the touch.
xo, Becky