Organized Kitchen Tour

This organized kitchen tour is packed full of ideas to declutter your cabinets, drawers, and pantry so you can create an efficient kitchen that’s easy to use and keep tidy!

We moved into our home almost 3 years ago and ever since I’ve been fine tuning my organizational systems. I’ve also been slowly simplifying the amount of stuff I store in this space to make cooking meals each night easier.

I recently went through and did a full kitchen declutter, clean and organize with me and I finally feel like my kitchen is where I want it to be! I shared all my secrets for successfully decluttering your kitchen quickly last week on the blog! Head over to my YouTube channel to watch my decluttering process in action. But today is all about our organized kitchen tour.

You can take our organized kitchen tour in this week’s YouTube video!

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience. You can read my full disclosure policy here.

Our Organized Kitchen Tour

Before I dive deep into cabinets and drawers, I want to mention a few things first.

First, I do love to cook! So while I may have more than the average person, I probably have a lot less than the norm. And if you love to cook too, I think you’ll find that sticking with the basics is usually easier than trying to keep ALL. THE. THINGS!

Second, we do store a handful of kitchen items in a closet just around the corner from our kitchen. These are items like our crock pot, food processor, electric griddle, and dutch oven. While I do use these items regularly, I found them bulky and troublesome to store in my smaller cabinets. I’m all for using your spaces wisely. If you have a few bulkier pieces that don’t fit well within your cabinets, don’t be afraid to think outside the box!

Finally, every’s kitchen setup and needs are very different. Today I’m just sharing what works for us in our home. I hope you can glean some inspiration and encouragement today to make your kitchen more efficient and organized.

Read all about how we painted our dark espresso cabinets white on a serious budget here!

**At the end of this post, I will share a source list with as many of our kitchen products as possible.**

Let’s jump into our organized kitchen tour. Our kitchen is an L-shape with an island in the middle. Let’s start on the right and work our way around. We will begin with our pantry cabinet!

PANTRY CABINET STORAGE

While I dream of a pantry closet like I had in my last house, this house just doesn’t have that. And I’ve learned to work around it. This house actually didn’t come with a pantry, but we added this tall, narrow cabinet right after we moved in. I’m so thankful we did!

While I miss the days of having more food storage, I’ve learned over the past three years that storing less food is actually easier. Reducing the inventory of food we store down to just what we will reasonably use over a week or two has helped our pantry stay so much more organized.

This has also helped reduce our food waste and our grocery budget! I’m no longer finding pantry items that have expired or buying things I already have on hand. I’m more efficient in my kitchen because I know where everything is and I can get to it easily. Overall, reducing our food inventory has been a great step for our family.

Our pantry has three pull out drawers on the bottom and 2 shelves on the top. The bottom drawer stores chips and bulkier snack items. The middle drawer has a bowl for fruit as well as a basket with some of our boxed items like pasta and taco shells. The top drawer holds all of our airtight food containers I purchased from Walmart. They run between $4 and $8 in stores. These are similar to the OXO containers without the hefty price tag! I store things like sugar, wheat grain, oats, and rice in these.

The top pantry cabinet has two shelves. The top shelf is where we store potatoes, onions, and garlic. The bottom shelf is where we store things like protein powder, protein bars, PB Fit, and anything else we use to make smoothies. Our blender is in the lower cabinet right next to the pantry so this makes blending up smoothies and protein shakes super easy!

KITCHEN SINK AREA

Next up on our organized kitchen tour is the area surrounding our kitchen sink!

The right upper cabinet above our dishwasher holds all of our daily dishes. It also stores our glasses and some of our serving pieces like platters and larger serving bowls. While I try to stick with mostly basic white dishes, you’ll see I do enjoy adding in a few pops of color!

Between our dishwasher and pantry is a drawer and small cabinet. This drawer is our designated junk drawer. I use these acrylic organizers to help keep it organized.

The cabinet below is where we store some of our small appliances like our toaster and blender. We also store our pie and cake pans behind because we don’t reach for those items as often.

Below our kitchen sink we store all of our kitchen cleaning necessities along with our dishwasher tabs. I’ve used acrylic bins to store both. I also used Sterilite drawers to store things like my eCloths, extra sponges, and magic erasers.

COOKING + BAKING CORNER

I call this corner of our kitchen my cooking corner because this is where you’ll find me standing every night when I’m cooking dinner. Its located right between or sink and our stove so it’s the perfect place to store all the cooking and baking essentials.

Upper Cabinets

The upper cabinet to the left of our sink is where we store some of our baking supplies as well as our food storage containers. We’ve chosen to keep our food storage containers pretty minimal. I’ve found that having an abundance of food storage only encourages us to not eat up our leftovers. If all my food storage containers are in use in my fridge, then I probably don’t need to be fixing a meal to only add more to it. We need to instead eat up our leftovers.

The upper corner cabinet is where we store several food items. On the bottom shelf of this cabinet you’ll find things like bread, peanut butter and honey. The middle shelf contains a lot of baking items including boxed cake and brownie mixes, brown and powdered sugars, as well as a few of my very large seasoning mixes from Sams Club!

The top shelf is a little harder to get to. I store a basket where we keep our seasoning packets along with our bread crumbs. However, the majority of what I store up here are back-up items. Things like ketchup, BBQ sauce, and jelly can be found up here. If I purchase something to replace a refrigerated item, but we aren’t quite out of the original it goes up here. This cabinet actually stays mostly empty.

The next upper cabinet to the right of the stove is my spice cabinet. On the bottom shelf I used an adjustable tiered stand to store my canned goods. I only buy what I will actually use for my recipes, so I usually don’t have a ton of canned goods in this space.

The middle shelf is dedicated to all the spices. I have two lazy Susans where we store all of our spices. This is my favorite way to store spices! It doesn’t require that I decant my spices into fancy jars, I can easily see everything I have, and it’s easy to get to everything. So simple!

The top shelf has a basket and another lazy Susan. (Have I old you how much I LOVE lazy Susans?!) The basket contains a few extra spices and some of my homemade spice mixes and the lazy Susan holds all of our main vinegars and oils we use for cooking.

Bottom Cabinets

The bottom cabinets pack a lot of storage punch in this area as well! First up is the stack of four drawers to the left of the sink.

The top three drawers store all of our kitchen gadgets and utensils. Anything from spatulas to measuring spoons to our apple slicer to a can opener are stored here. We used this tutorial to create our own custom drawer dividers for a fraction of what we would have spent on anything else. I love that they are custom designed to fit our needs!

The very bottom drawer holds all of our kitchen towels. We do keep a good number of towels because I cook and bake a lot and we tend to go through them quickly!

The lower corner cabinet is a lazy Susan style cabinet. It’s where we store all of our pots and pans with lids, our cast iron skillet, two metal bowls, and our strainers.

There is a skinny cabinet between the lazy Susan corner cabinet and our stove. This is where we store all of our baking sheets and cutting boards.

COFFEE BAR + REFRIGERATOR

The last section of cabinets against our wall is between our stove and refrigerator. This is where we’ve setup our coffee station!

Above our stove we have a very small cabinet. It’s the perfect size for our vitamins and medicines so that’s mainly what’s stored up there. I also store my very loved food chopper!

Between the stove and the refrigerator we have all of our coffee supplies as well as water bottles. I store our coffee in these airtight containers from Walmart. They are very similar to the OXO airtight containers without the hefty price! I use baskets from Target all around my kitchen to contain like items.

I use a wine bottle acrylic rack to hold our water bottles. I’ve been using this storage system for years and it’s honestly the best thing I’ve found! No more bottles tipping over as you reach for one in the back.

In the drawer below, we store our hot pads and oven mitts as well as our pancake turner, meat masher, two pairs of tongs, and a few spoons. I’ve found that removing the majority of duplicates has made this space function much better. I never use more than 2-3 spoons at a time so why was I keeping so many?! Simplifying down to just what you actually use makes organizing your kitchen so much easier.

In the lower cabinet, we store our mixing and serving bowls, baking pans, 2 larger airtight containers for storing baked goods like cookies or muffins, and my set of cooling racks. I bake and cook a lot so I’m fine keeping all of these items.

Above our refrigerator is a small cabinet that we don’t get into often. I didn’t want to store regularly used items up here, but I’m also not a fan of storing things I don’t use at all!

We settled on storing a small set of mason jars we use for food storage, yogurt parfaits, or any other number of things around the house. I also store two baskets that contain all of my cake and cookie decorating supplies. These include things like sprinkles, food coloring, frosting tips, and cookie cutters. All of these items are used in our home every month or two.

You’ll also notice in some of the pictures that we utilize the side of our refrigerator as our family command center. I talk more about how we set that up in this post!

KITCHEN ISLAND STORAGE

Our kitchen island is the final stop in our organized kitchen tour. Our kitchen island is constantly in use. From baking to homework to snacks, it really gets a lot of use in our home. I’m thankful for this extra storage space in our kitchen. We are blessed with two large lower cabinets as well as two large drawers for storage.

The left drawer contains all of our silverware as well as our grilling tools. This drawer is closest to the kitchen table and the backdoor so this just made the most sense for our space.

The right drawer holds all of our plastic bags, food wrapping supplies, crock pot liners, and clothespins for sealing open food items.

The left cabinet is where I store my most used large appliances including my mill, stand mixer, and our indoor grill. I use the shirt second shelf to store all of my cookbooks as well as a basket that contains all of my muffins liners.

The right cabinet is our kid cabinet. It holds all of our snack foods, quick and easy breakfast items, lunch boxes, and kid bowls and cups. I use more of those Target baskets to keep this space organized. Honestly, this is the cabinet I have to go into about once a month to tidy up. My kids are constantly in and out of this cabinet so it does tend to get disorganized quickly. But these baskets really help to contain the mess!

ADDITIONAL KITCHEN STORAGE

I’m all about creating an efficiency kitchen. I want to get to things easily and know exactly what I have on hand. If my cabinets are overflowing with stuff, then I’m probably wasting both time cooking and money as I overbuy food.

So instead of trying to cram my cabinets with my small appliances, I decided to store a few things in a closet just around the corner from my kitchen. You can utilize a closet, basement, or even garage! But getting those large bulky items out of your kitchen will free up so much space.

I have three shelves where I store things like our paper goods (paper plates, bowls, extra napkins, and silverware), our crock pot, air fryer, dutch oven, food process, electric griddle, waffle maker, and ice cream maker. All of these tools are used regularly in our home. I can easily walk the 15 steps around the corner to grab what I need and my kitchen stays organized!

Now, I’m not promoting keeping small appliances you don’t ever use. If it’s not being used at least once every month or two, then it’s probably not worth storing. But if you are struggling to store bulky items, consider relocating a few larger items to a new storage space in your home. I bet you can find a shelf or two in a hallways closet if you just get rid of some unwanted and unused items!

I’ve found that the number one key to keeping my kitchen organized on a regular basis is having less stuff to organize. While I’m sure that having other tools and gadgets might be nice, I’d rather my kitchen be more efficient to use. I’ve become more creative with using what I already have on hand instead of always thinking I need something new.

I’m definitely not against having a kitchen filled with amazing tools that help you create delicious meals. But I think it’s important to realize what season of life you are in. Are you in a season of life where you cook gourmet meals 6-7 nights a week? Do you bake from scratch often? Or are you in season of keeping your meals simple? If you use something regularly, then by all means keep it. However, simplifying your kitchen to just the necessities and nothing more will make preparing meals so much easier.

Organized Kitchen Tour Source List

I hope you enjoyed this organized kitchen tour! As promised, here is the source list of all kitchen organizing tools I mentioned in this post:

Better Homes and Gardens Airtight Containers

OXO Airtight Containers

Lazy Susans/Turn Tables

Blue Small Baskets (Target)

Blue Large Baskets (Target)

Adjustable Tiered Stand

Water Bottle Holders

Drawer Liner

Food Chopper

eCloth Microfiber cloths

Bamboo Silverware Organizer

Drawer Organizer (similar)

Magnetic Acrylic Refrigerator Pocket

Magnetic Cup Holder

Do you have any amazing kitchen organizing tips? I’d love to hear them in the comments below!

Have a great day!

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