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Taming your plastic container lids and other kitchen organization tips

By Jennifer Durrant special To The Daily Herald - | Feb 26, 2019

Like so many other people, I have embarked on The Great Purge of 2019, spurred on by the inspiration of the lovely Marie Kondo’s KonMari method. And as such, I’ve been slowly working my way through every room in my home looking for items that simply don’t spark joy and tossing them into the growing Deseret Industries pile.

After a deep dive into my bedroom and bathroom cupboard and drawer, and a quick pass through the kitchen, it’s time to hunker down and really organize my kitchen. With a small pantry and overflowing supplies of plastic container and a brimming fridge, it’s time to get to work. Here are some great tips I plan to use. For more, visit our Ultimate Organizing board on Pinterest.

Pantry

I truly love my house, but if there’s one thing I would change, it would be to add a walk-in pantry. The large cupboard, while spacious, is just a little too small and dark to easily view every cooking essential. Organization is essential for this pantry to be functional. So while I have deployed several organizational tips, it’s time to continue the trend.

When it comes to all those food stuffs in the pantry, it’s all about containing the chaos in the perfect container. The first tip to create sleek shelves is to ditch the boxes and bags most products come in. Instead pour cereal, flour, chocolate chips, pasta, rice and even chips and popcorn in labeled air-tight containers.

Cupboard

Have you heard the joke about how every sock lost in the dryer is reincarnated as a plastic container lid? This is especially true in my kitchen! So many lids! My cupboards are literally overflowing with all sorts of stacked glass and plastic containers. And let’s not even mention the pile of pots and pans.

Once you’ve successfully paired all the list to the containers in your cupboard, it doesn’t require expensive organizational gadgets to tame the lid explosion. A few tools you might already have in your kitchen include cooling racks, dish drainers and even those old CD organizational racks. Tension rods, too, can be set up in drawers to hold all those lids.

Fridge

My refrigerator is probably the most frustrating, unorganized area in my kitchen. Not only is it filled with endless half-full bottles of ketchup and barbecue sauce, the basic staples like milk, eggs and cheese, but it is also filled with way too many boxes of restaurant leftovers that obscure the view of the fresh fruits and veggies I should be eating. Time to get that vortex cleaned up!

The trick to an organized fridge is to group like things together. For instance, toss all those after school snacks into easy-to-see-through clear bins. Fruit in one clear container, juice boxes in another. Toss all those condiments and dressing bottles in a plastic basket, too, for easy access. Grab a collection of those bins at the Dollar Store, too, to save some money while organizing beautifully.

– Jennifer Durrant

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