Kitchen Guides
6 Steps to Organising Your Kitchen Utensils
Put an end to knives and forks overlapping, spoons crammed together and that mess of baking utensils
Ah, the dreaded overflowing utensil drawer. Every home has one (or two) and today is a great day to declutter and organise yours. That way, you can find what you need quickly without having to dig through eight sets of salad servers and six bottle openers…
Step 2
Sort everything into categories so you can see like items together and visualise how many of each utensils you actually have.
Find a kitchen designer to help design your storage
Sort everything into categories so you can see like items together and visualise how many of each utensils you actually have.
Find a kitchen designer to help design your storage
Suggested categories might include tongs, wooden spoons, soup ladles, spatulas, measuring spoons, chopsticks, graters, serving spoons, and so on.
Browse more kitchen ideas
Browse more kitchen ideas
Step 3
Recycle and throw out any rubbish. In this collection there will usually be some plastic cutlery saved from a picnic or takeaway meal, straws covered in crumbs, disposable chopsticks and tools that have been half-melted on the barbecue.
Recycle and throw out any rubbish. In this collection there will usually be some plastic cutlery saved from a picnic or takeaway meal, straws covered in crumbs, disposable chopsticks and tools that have been half-melted on the barbecue.
Step 4
Declutter items you’ll just never use. That wine bottle cork seemed like a good idea… but you’ve just never used it. Christmas-themed pâté knives? Nice, but nope, they can go. And do you really use all your sets of salad servers, or are you more likely to use tongs for loose leafy greens?
How to Have a Clean, Clutter-Free, Positivity-Filled Home
Declutter items you’ll just never use. That wine bottle cork seemed like a good idea… but you’ve just never used it. Christmas-themed pâté knives? Nice, but nope, they can go. And do you really use all your sets of salad servers, or are you more likely to use tongs for loose leafy greens?
How to Have a Clean, Clutter-Free, Positivity-Filled Home
Step 5
Pare down your duplicates. Here are three items that most homes have in over-abundance: tongs, wooden spoons and egg flippers or spatulas. My recommendation is to only keep as many as you’ll use at one time.
Pare down your duplicates. Here are three items that most homes have in over-abundance: tongs, wooden spoons and egg flippers or spatulas. My recommendation is to only keep as many as you’ll use at one time.
Wooden spoons with splits can harbour germs so you might want to replace these as well. Duplicates take up a lot of space in the average utensil drawer, so keep only what you realistically will use and declutter the rest.
You may believe that you should have three soup ladles in case you have a big, wintry soup cook-up, but how realistic is that? And could you just borrow an extra from your neighbour if this does happen one day?
Step 6
Decide how to store your utensils. Depending on your kitchen layout and set up, different storage solutions work for different families. We hang our utensils on a rail near the stove and find this easy as we can always see what we have. An added bonus is that it stops us accumulating too many utensils, which can look cluttered.
Decide how to store your utensils. Depending on your kitchen layout and set up, different storage solutions work for different families. We hang our utensils on a rail near the stove and find this easy as we can always see what we have. An added bonus is that it stops us accumulating too many utensils, which can look cluttered.
You may prefer to have a utensil pot next to the stove – these are great for regularly used items. If you seem to fall into the trap of having a container that regularly overflows, try taking all your utensils out and putting them into a box, then only return items you use over the course of a month or two.
25 Genius Kitchen Storage Ideas
25 Genius Kitchen Storage Ideas
If you’re going with kitchen drawer storage, I suggest limiting your utensil collection to just one drawer and setting that as a natural limit. I find that if you’ve gone through the above five steps by the time you get to this step, it’s not too complicated.
I don’t think most people need drawer dividers, because by now you will only have items that you use regularly (and a reasonable number of high-use items at that). So, set aside a drawer and just pop them all in. No order, no system, just all together. When you have a more pared-back utensil collection the drawer will look organised just as it is.
Read more:
Open Storage vs Closed Storage: Which is Better for Your Kitchen?
13 Top Kitchen Storage Ideas
Tell us:
Do you have any other ideas to add? Tell us in the Comments below, save your favourite images, like this story and join the conversation.
Read more:
Open Storage vs Closed Storage: Which is Better for Your Kitchen?
13 Top Kitchen Storage Ideas
Tell us:
Do you have any other ideas to add? Tell us in the Comments below, save your favourite images, like this story and join the conversation.
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Grab every single utensil from your kitchen and place each one on the bench. This means everything from the utensil drawer and anything that hangs or sits in a utensil holder (and don’t be surprised when you behold a mountain of silverware and wood that has bred in your kitchen drawers).