Kitchen organization is a snap with tips from Hartz Homes!

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Posted: March 19, 2018 - Homebuyer's Blog

When you move into your new home from Hartz Homes, you’ll benefit from putting some thought into organizing your sparkling new kitchen. Here are 6 tips we’ve learned over the years that can help you.

Rule 1: Place items where you use them. If you always stand in front of the stove while cooking, you want everything you use when preparing meals to be as close as possible to the stove. Don’t put your spices in a cabinet all the way on the other side of the kitchen and out of your reach, place them as close to the stove as you can. If you want your small kids to get their own snacks or dishes, place the items they’ll need in the cabinets they can reach.

Rule 2: Separate food from dishes. 

In any kitchen, remembering where you put something away starts with reserving some cabinets for anything that’s edible and others for anything that’s not. Preferably, the separation will have some logic to it – food to the left and tableware to the right, or food in the upper cabinets and everything else in the lower ones.

Rule 3: Categorize as much as you can.  Maximize storage by sorting items into categories. Even within the separation above, you can break items down into categories that will make it easier to use your kitchen. For example, say you move all of your edible items to your two left-hand cabinets. You can then decide that one of these is for cans, and one for other types of packaging. Or, that one is for frequently used foods and one for the stuff you reach for less often. Or, that one is for healthy meal staples and the other for fun snacks.

The specifics are up to you, but the goal is to think “raisins” and know exactly which door to open and where to reach to find them. Similarly, create one section of a cabinet for plates, one for bowls, one for wine glasses, one for other glasses, and so on. The more you adhere to these categories, the less you (or others in your household) will ask “Where’s that blue cup?” once a week.

Rule 4: Give frequently used items priority. 

If you drink coffee from a mug every day, and drink wine from a wine glass once a month, your coffee mugs should go in the part of your cabinet that’s most easy to get at, and your wine glasses can have a less desirable bit of cabinet real estate. If you keep certain foods or serving platters around because you use them on rare occasions, put them in the cabinets that are least convenient.

Rule 5: Be neat.  Your cabinets don’t have to look like a high-end boutique display, but try to keep labels facing out, boxes lined up, and bowls stacked in order of size. Turning a jumble into an organized set-up makes everything in your cabinets easy to see and to access.

Rule 6: Make effective use of upper and lower cabinets
Items usually stored in upper cabinets include:

Food

Storing food in the kitchen cabinets is recommended only for those kitchens that do not have a pantry. If you do have a pantry, first, try to store as much food as possible in the pantry leaving the cabinets for tools, pots and pans, and appliances.

Group food including spices, bottles and food storage containers in the cabinets just above your kitchen workstation (the counter space you use to chop, knead, and mix).

This way they can be easily accessed while prepping, chopping, and mixing.

Glasses and Dishes

Group and store glasses and dishes directly over either your dishwasher or the drying rack for quicker cleanup and storage.

Cookbooks

Store cookbooks in your non-prime real estate areas because you will not be reaching for them as often as food and dishes.

Storage containers

Store your plastic and glass storage containers right above the counter space you use to store and containerize food like leftovers or bulk purchases like flour, salt, sugar and grains.

Items usually stored in lower cabinets include:

Appliances

Store kitchen appliances in the bottom cabinets just below your main work area for easy access during food prep. If you use an appliance daily, consider moving it to your countertop.

Pots, Pans and Baking Sheets

Store your kitchen pots and pans in the bottom cabinet, pans on their side to maximize space and pots nesting together. Lids should also be stored vertically.

Mixing Bowls, Cutting Boards and Salad Spinners

Store mixing bowls, cutting boards, and salad spinners (which can be a real pain) as close to the drying rack or dishwasher as possible for easy cleanup and storage.

Cleaning Supplies

Never store cleaning supplies on a top shelf. In an event they leak, at best you have to take everything out of the kitchen cabinets and scrub them, at worst someone could not notice the spill and eat or cook something with cleaning supplies on them. Lower cabinets are better, just use a lock. Store your kitchen cleaning supplies in the bottom cabinet under the sink. The space under the sink tends to be such an awkward space, it makes most sense to store bottles and sprays, which take up little room, in this tight spot.

TIP: If you have small children or pets, consider a child-proof lock.

 

Final Thought: Plan to go through your cabinets and do a complete overhaul once or twice a year, depending on what type of cook you are.

Please check out these new home communities from Hartz Homes:
Armitage Pointe of Addison, Illinois (Chicago area new home construction)
Bella Vista Townhomes of Bolingbrook, Illinois (Chicago area new home construction)
Lago Vista of Lockport,
Illinois (Chicago area new home construction)
Leigh Creek of New Lenox, Illinois (Chicago area new home construction)
Marquis Pointe of Montgomery, Illinois (Chicago area new home construction)
Marywood Meadows of Montgomery, Illinois (Chicago area new home construction)
Nantucket Lakes of New Lenox, Illinois (Chicago area new home construction)
Oliviabrook of Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois (Chicago area new home construction)
Park West of Manteno, Illinois (Chicago area new home construction)
Playa Vista of Plainfield, Illinois (Chicago area new home construction)
Shannon Estates of New Lenox
, Illinois (Chicago area new home construction)
Sky Harbor of New Lenox, Illinois (Chicago area new home construction)
Whisper Creek of Mokena, Illinois (Chicago area new home construction)

Hartz Homes has new home communities in:
Addison, Illinois (Chicago area new home construction)
Aurora, Illinois (Chicago area new home construction)
Bolingbrook, Illinois (Chicago area new home construction)
Lockport, Illinois (Chicago area new home construction)
New Lenox (Chicago area new home construction)
Manteno, Illinois (Chicago area new home construction)
Mokena, Illinois (Chicago area new home construction)
Montgomery, Illinois (Chicago area new home construction)
Plainfield, Illinois (Chicago area new home construction)
Oakbrook Terrace (Chicago area new home construction)