True story: when Jay and I were newlyweds (and new parents) and had just moved to Durham, an older, wiser woman who I will not name came to visit us. After being at our house for about 3 hours, therefore learning her way around, she straight up told me that my kitchen didn’t make sense (lol). Honestly, she was right. When we moved to Durham, I was 36 weeks pregnant. We had 4 different people unpacking boxes in the kitchen, and anything was going in any drawer. By the time Hollings came along, I had no energy to reorganize the kitchen, and I was in such zombie state of mind, that I didn’t even really notice that my dinner plates were in a cabinet under my counter with my crockpot and cheese grater.

If you read the last sentence above and didn’t find anything wrong with my placement of the dinner plates, this article may be helpful for you. After the “I just had a baby” fog went away for the most part, I got my act together and reorganized my kitchen. Below I’ll give you a few tips on where it makes sense to keep all of your kitchenware.

Everyday Dishes

Let’s start with the items that you’re grabbing the most. These are you plates, bowls, etc. that you’re using 3 times a day. They need to be in an accessible location. This means that they do not belong in the cabinet above your refrigerator that you can only get to if you stand on a dining room chair. In our house, we have 3 open shelves in our kitchen. The bottom two shelves are where I keep our dinner plates, our salad plates, and our bowls, because I can easily get to them. On the top shelve (which is a little higher and harder to reach) I keep a milk glass pitcher, gravy boat, and cake stand. This is just because they looks nice with the white bowls and plates and is simply decoration.

Cooking Utensils

Since you are most likely using these when you are cooking/near the stove, that is exactly where they should go. Whether in holder on the countertop (like where I have mine), or organized neatly in a drawer, they need to be by the stove. It doesn’t make sense to be making spaghetti sauce on the stove and have to walk all the way to the opposite side of he kitchen to get large spoon to stir it.

Coffee Items

I feel pretty confident in saying that most people keep their coffee makers out on their counters (or at least their electric coffee makes – maybe you fancy french-pressers keep yours in a cabinet). Wherever you have your coffee maker, your mugs, filters, kcups, espresso pods, whatever you use, should go in the cabinet directly above the coffee maker. That way you don’t have to walk all around the kitchen looking for what you need before you’ve even had a chance to wake up in the morning.

Glasses

Instead of having your glasses scattered in a billion different cabinets, try putting all of your glasses (water glasses, wine glasses, champagne glasses, etc.) together in one cabinet, but separate them by category on different shelves. I’ve found that cabinets above the counters tend to have shelves, while the cabinets below the counters are nice and open. We have our water and cocktail glasses on the bottom shelf, because we reach for the water glasses the most. We have our wine and champagne glasses on the middle shelf. Our top shelf, which is harder to reach without a step stool, is where we keep our fine china.

Fine China and Crystal

Maybe you have a beautiful china cabinet where this is all displayed (one day I hope to have one, too). Maybe you have it all in storage because, let’s be real, you never use it anyway. I actually really enjoy using my fine china and will find any excuse to break it out. That being said, I’ll still go a month (or two or three) without touching it. For that reason, I keep my fine china on a top shelf in one of my cabinets. It’s a shelf that I need a step stool to get to, but it beats having to break it out of storage every time I want to use it. You know those small little cabinets above the stove that are near impossible to get to? That’s where I keep my crystal wine glasses. I know that they’re safe and out of Hollings’ reach up there.

Pots, Pans, and Crockpots

Remember when I was talking about those big open cabinets below the counters? That’s where you should store your pots, pans, crockpots, casserole dishes, and all other big bulky dishes. To save space, I stack skillets, sauce pans, glass casserole dishes, and anything else that can be stacked.

If your kitchen already looks like this, that’s great! I’m sure you can back me up on how much better it is that having a disorganized kitchen. If not, try switching up your methods! You might be surprised by how much more you like it.