To organize your new kitchen, start before the move

I know I talk about organizing kitchens in my blog a lot. Clients ask for it a lot, and as a fan of cooking, I love the challenge. Not having an organized and functional kitchen can hinder kitchen productivity, but a kitchen that is set up to cater to the cook’s needs will save time and make cooking more enjoyable.

I worked with Nava and Jon, who wanted help packing up their old kitchen and unpacking it at their new place. They decided their family needed that area done as soon as possible. One complication? The new kitchen layout was smaller than at their old place. We talked over some ideas, and one of our solutions was to declutter the old kitchen as part of packing it up.

We packed the basics, such as plate settings and silverware, right away. Jon and Nava used them regularly and didn’t feel the need to get rid of any. For everything else, we laid out all the stuff in categories first. That made it easy to notice unnecessary extras, like the six spatulas we found hidden and overlooked in the back of the cutlery drawer. Some had obviously been bought because someone couldn’t find a spatula, or because it came in a set with something else. Keeping the nicer ones and tossing the messed up ones was an easy call.

We also found a lot of shot glasses and mismatched wine glasses from sets that had accumulated over the years as individual glasses broke. Looking over all of the barware at once made it easier for Jon and Nava to figure out which glasses looked good enough together to keep, and which were surplus or too mismatched to hold on to. They let go of the rest.

Nava and Jon had a lot of cooking pots and storage containers and weren’t sure how to cut down their supply. So we laid out all of the pots, pans, and containers and matched each one to its lid. Looking them all over, the couple recognized that the items they remembered using least were the ones with lost or broken lids. After that, getting rid of the items without lids was an easy call.

This whole process helped to whittle down unwanted items before unpacking, without forcing Jon and Nava discard things they liked and used purely for space reasons. Once we brought everything over to the new place, it all fit right in.

Jon was the main cook in the family, so while decluttering was a group project, for the new kitchen set-up I worked mainly with him. Before I even started to unpack at the new home, I talked with Jon about how he would use the kitchen space. We walked through how Jon would approach some typical scenarios in the new kitchen, paying attention to where the sink and stove were placed and how he would use the counter space between them. We also reviewed the shelves and cabinets, identifying which ones were at a convenient height for all of the family members, not just Jon. If an everyday item such as a glass is out of reach on a high shelf, that’s not functional for this family.

At the end of the session, the new kitchen was all set up and ready to use while Nava and Jon unpacked the rest of the house. Nava said to me as she handed me the check, “This was the best investment we’ve made to help with the kitchen set up.”