Just 5 Kitchen Favorites

As I continue working through the Spring Cleaning of my kitchen, I thought I’d share some of my favorite items for keeping my kitchen tidy and organized. For most homes, I feel like the kitchen is the hub, and keeping it clean and functional is so important. I don’t think I really prioritized keeping a tidy kitchen until after I had both of my boys. The clutter started to really get to me, and I wanted things to just work better. I wanted tools and ingredients in places that made sense, I wanted to prevent paper clutter from taking over, and I really just wanted a spot that didn’t stress me out to be in… especially being a stay-at-home parent. Trial and error of different systems and products have brought me to my top 5 kitchen favorites:

Herb & Spice Rack

My spice rack with pull out shelves is one of my favorite kitchen purchases ever. I had a spice carousel thing before this, and while it worked fine, I had a lot of things in it that came with the set that I didn’t use, and it just sat on the countertop collecting dust and getting spattered with oil and sauces from cooking.

I think I switched to the SpiceStack when we lived in Texas, so I’ve had it for quite a few years now. The one in the photo below looks different from this one, but I believe it’s probably just an upgraded version.

Decanting and Uniformity

I try not to keep too much on my countertops, but some things do just stay out all the time. The best way I’ve found to minimize the clutter with these things is uniformity. I’ve switched everything to plain white containers to blend in with our white appliances and white walls.

I decant my olive oil into a white cruet, my salted butter stays on the countertop in a white butter dish, and my cooking utensils are in a white canister. Besides blending in with their surroundings, another pro for white containers is that they all match even though they’re not made by the same companies.

In-Drawer Knife Block

We had a countertop knife block for many years, and it worked fine. What I didn’t like was that it took up space on the countertop, we didn’t even use all of the knives in it (they came as a set), and it was something else that got dusty and spattered during cooking. After contemplating it for quite awhile, I decided to try out an in-drawer knife block. This meant I had to do some decluttering so I had a drawer to use, but it has been 100% worth it! I love the extra space on the countertop, and I love having all of my knives in once place (we used to have knives that didn’t belong to the set in other drawers).

Roll-Up Dish Rack

I haven’t used a traditional dish drying rack in years, because they always seemed to get mildew-y and gross. I switched to a dish drying mat (which I still use) but I often felt like I didn’t have enough room for all of my hand-washed dishes, and some items didn’t dry all the way because of lack of air flow.

So I decided to try a roll-up dish rack that sits on the left side of my double sink. I love that this rolls up when I’m not using it, giving me access to the second sink when I need it, and I love that things can drip dry and get air circulation now (especially water bottles!).

Bag Holders

I used to have such an issue with plastic shopping bags and reusable shopping bags! At one point, I had a plastic bag filled with other plastic bags. Then I tried folding the plastic bags into triangles to store them more compactly, but that was time consuming and they still weren’t stored well. Finally I realized there are hanging bag holders!

I immediately got onto Etsy to order two of them: one for my plastic bags (I use them for bathroom trash cans and for food scraps when I’m chopping/peeling) and one for my reusable produce bags. I also switched to BagPodz instead of my collection of random reusable shopping bags. Now they’re all hanging out of the way in my pantry instead of collecting in a mess on the pantry floor. Also notice that I have not gotten to my pantry with Spring Cleaning haha… hoping to really overhaul it one of these weekends because it has gotten so unorganized!

If you have been struggling to love how your kitchen looks and works for you, hopefully one or more of these was a helpful suggestion. My kitchen still isn’t “perfect,” but it definitely brings me much more joy than it used to.