The pandemic has turned almost everyone into a “chef” at home. With people sharing their recipes online with a snapshot of their latest creation, two things are for sure – it has encouraged people to actually cook and it has made the kitchen alive and messy for all the right reasons. Because of that, keeping everything organized has become more of a challenge. Here are some easy ways to organize your small kitchen apartment.

How to Keep Your Small Kitchen Apartment Organized

If you’ve recently used your kitchen apartment, you might have realized there are a lot of things you don’t have. Reading a recipe from a cook book or watching it via YouTube makes you want to buy every single ingredient and every single kitchen tool. If you already have that on your mind, it’s time you know how to keep things organized even before you go on a shopping spree.

#1 Empty all cabinets and Categorize

Yes, you read it right – ALL cabinets. The only way you get to know what to organize is to actually see what you’re dealing with. Emptying all the cabinets would show you what you have, what you don’t have, and what actually doesn’t belong there.

Empty all the cabinets and put everything on the counters or on tables if you have to. Now, categorize like with like. Put pots and pans together, spoon and forks together, knives together, measuring cups in one place, and.. you get the point.

#2 Keep only what you need

You have empty cabinets ready and you have utensils and kitchen tools categorized. What’s next? It’s time to get rid of what you don’t need. This would mean the actual trash that doesn’t belong anywhere at home and kitchen stuff that are there but you are sure not to be using anytime soon. Actual trash goes to, well, the trash while kitchen tools that aren’t going to be used goes to a box that you can put away for future purposes. Here you can also get rid of the four other cheese graters, for example, and just keep one.

It’s really combing through everything you have to make sure that what stays in the cabinets are for sure the only things you will be using.

#3 Figure out what kind of cooking you do, Use easily reached cabinets/shelves first

Now that you have everything you need and you have gotten rid of what you don’t want and need, you are left with only what goes into the cabinets. Now, before you go ahead and go Marie Kondo on all the stuff you see, consider what kind of cooking you do and the movement you have in the kitchen. This would be dedicated to what goes where.

For example, if you are more of a baker, make sure you keep what you need on shelves that you can easily reach and that the shelf or cabinet is close to the table where you bake. That way, you know where to put certain things and you do minimal movements when you are in the kitchen which saves you time and effort.

To add to these three steps, here are more tips for keeping things organized. Make sure your pantry is well organized – like with like. Clear off countertops all the time as this makes your kitchen look bigger and wider. Only use tableware that you need and get more storage solutions that could hold more of what you need to store and while you’re at it, choose those that go with the whole aesthetics of your apartment.

With these tips and these three easy ways to organize your small kitchen apartment, you are now ready to take on recipe after recipe without having to worry about where to find certain kitchen tools, whether or not you have them, or how to make sure it looks clean or organized even after a whole day of cooking and baking. Just make sure everything goes right where they’re supposed to be at the end of the day. As for having the discipline to keep things organized—let’s save that for another blog.