I cook our family’s food from scratch, every day, 365 day a year. We don’t go out except on very rare special occasions. I am too cheap and as a vegan to finicky to eat out most places…besides we live in the sticks!
As I covered in my last post about food storage. Being prepared is also key to running a kitchen efficiently. To know how you cook and organize your kitchen accordingly. You do not need a big fancy kitchen to have one that runs will with few wasted steps. In fact a huge kitchen can be a detriment to efficiency.
There are a few things that should be done before setting up or re-organizing your kitchen….
Get Rid of what you don’t use…
Be realistic. Do you really need 3 waffle irons? How about those 15 packets of gravy mix in the back of the spice cabinet? While you are purging the unneeded look for the outdated, the broken beyond repair, and the things you hate. For me it was getting rid of a frying pan that I absolutely hated. I gave it to one of my older sons who are starting out and replaced it with one that worked much better for me.
If you have things that only get used during the holidays move them somewhere besides your kitchen…just remember where you put them. Keep valuable kitchen real estate for the most used and useful items
Make sure everything in your kitchen is used frequently.
Seriously take a look at how you cook…
Are you a gourmet cook that needs lots of spices? Do you like me spend vast amounts of time baking? Do you need lots of different pots and pans or will just a few simple ones suffice? Are small kitchen appliances something that you depend on daily or is a really sharp knife and box grater fine for you?
When you know how you cook organize stations for these tasks…
I have 4 deliberate zones in my kitchen. One for cooking, one for baking, another for clean up and the last for eating. Each has the tools for that task within reach.
My Cooking zone…
In this is my pots and pans, utensils that I use for cooking such as stirring spoons, knives, spatulas, ladles, etc. My most used spices are kept near by with my more exotic kept higher in a cabinet. I also keep my non-stick spray and cutting boards handy.
My Baking zone…
I have a 3 drawers beneath where I bake that I store everything I need for all my recipes for breads and other goodies. All measuring cups, spoons, whisks are in the first drawer. Chocolate chips and baking chocolate along with sugars are kept in the second drawer. Third drawer has cookie cutters, muffin liners, and rolling pins. All my baking spices are kept within reach of this zone. Next to these drawers is a cabinet with my wheat grinder and Bosch bread mixer. Mixing bowls are within reach also.
Clean up zone…
This includes the sink and the dishwasher and draining board. I use the cabinet directly over the dish washer to store plates and cups that we use everyday. This saves steps when unloading the dishwasher. Towels and dishrags are kept in a drawer next to the sink.
Finally…eating
We keep dishes next to the area we eat along with napkins and the compost bucket. I also keep a small spice basket there with salt and pepper, Tabasco and sugar
Countertops...
These are a blessing and a curse in my house. I love having lots of counters but also hate the stuff they attract. Mail, newspapers, paint buckets, coats, plants (ok, like that one) etc. It is hard not to use such convenient horizontal surfaces as a dumping ground for everything.
I have made an effort to find places behind doors for most of my kitchen things like appliances…I have found that a cluttered counter seems to attract more clutter where as a clean sparse counter seems to stay neat longer.
Waste Disposal…
Keeping small recycling bins, as well as a bucket for compost in your kitchen makes the items that are actually put in the garbage to a minimum. It also makes clean up more efficient.
Storage…
I don’t store a lot of food in the kitchen (I use my pantry for that) but what I do store I store properly. Oils should be kept in a cabinet out of direct sunlight. Spices should not be stored next to the stove as heat and moisture will affect their flavor. Make sure foods are stored in areas that are appropriate to that food.
Store your most used items on the lowest most easily accessible shelves with the least used on the highest.
Working efficiently…
If you have decluttered and organized your kitchen you have taken a huge step to efficiency. Now when you actually step into the kitchen to prepare something you can follow a few very simple suggestions to make it even more streamlined.
Make sure you have all the ingredients you need before beginning…I know this sounds like common sense but I can’t tell you how many times I have been 3/4 of the way through a recipe and found that I was missing an ingredient that I was sure I had.
Gather all your necessary equipment…don’t waste while working by looking for the measuring spoon or the beaters for the mixer.
Clean up as you go…harder for some of us I will admit. Have a sink full of soapy water ready even if you use a dishwasher. As you get something dirty put it in the sink so the food won’t dry and cake on making it much harder to clean later.
Don’t let the dishes pile up on you…nothing is more discouraging than coming into your kitchen and seeing a mountain of dishes. It does nothing to inspire you to be creative in your kitchen…in fact it might just send you out to eat, and that is not what we’re hoping for here!
Make sure your kitchen is clean before retiring for the night to the couch or going to bed...I know for me this is hard. After dinner is done I am tired and in no mood for kitchen clean up. But those mornings that I get up and the kitchen is clean it makes my day so much sunnier. It also makes me inspired to come into and cook for the family…instead of running away! So wipe the counters and load the dishwasher, put everything back in its place, you will thank yourself in the morning!
Make extra...if you are making lasagna it is just as easy to make an extra pan for the freezer since you have the mess out anyway.
Remember no kitchen set up is etched in stone…rearrange and tweak it till it works perfectly for you and the way you cook. Making the commitment to cook from scratch may seem overwhelming but in a well organized kitchen, cooking and baking seems less of a chore and more of an adventure!
Oh and one more tip…
It saves time to have a computer in the kitchen to look up recipes or in this case write a post for NDiN…I actually made bread while writing this!
Kim can also be found at the inadvertent farmer where she raises organic fruits, veggies, critters, kids, and…a camel!
Great post. One of our winter projects will be taking a weekend to weed out the serving pieces and special occasion cookware we use only for big parties and moving them to the basement. I’m sick of having springform pans and serving trays attack me when I want a simple cookie sheet!
If I kept my computer in the kitchen, it would die because I spilled something on it. (I am NOT a tidy cook!) But one of the advantages of a small house is that my office, where the computer is safe, is ten steps away from the kitchen.
Great post. We moved over the summer and I am still tweaking the kitchen. Places that I thought made sense for things when we first moved in don’t work now. We’ve been there just over 4 months and it’s finally starting to come together. Now if I can just get the husband and children to put things back in the right places.
computer in a kitchen, fantastic idea
Make Extra is a great guide. When we moved into this house, we bought a chest freezer, and now we make double the amount of nearly everything. For me, most of the effort in cooking is in the shopping and the “getting started actually doing it.” The difference between prepping 7 lbs of tomatoes for salsa and prepping 14 lbs is… well, it’s technically twice as much, but all in all, it’s not that much.
The only problem is, the freezer is filling up and up and up, with no signs of us ever eating it down, and the grocery bills are even higher! I had a good laugh at myself and resolved to eat out of the freezer and the pantry for the next few weeks.
Such a neat and tidy kitchen. I’ve ben working thru mine for the past week but it will never look that good!
As for clean up after we’ve had a “rule” – one person cooks, the other cleans up. Come to the table for a done meal for one, the other is done when they sit down to eat.
If no extras, why 4 sets of measuring cups?
et…I always cook with small children under foot. They each get their own set so they will not be quite so ‘under foot’! It save me having to look for the measuring cups when the 2 year old has taken his to make a ramp on it for his trucks!
They know they only get them while I’m in the kitchen so they have become some of their favorite toys…go figure! Kim
Great post. I have found that over the years I have been able to simplify my kicthen. I have a fairly small kitchen with a lack of good working counterspace so I often use the dining table as well (which is easy since they’re one big room). I also have minimal cabinet space so keeping things at a minimun is also vital. I have few appliances, a good mixer and a blender and an immersion blender for pureed soups (finally broke down).
I find that if you buy good quality pieces you can have fewer items. I have one set of measuring cups and I wash after using. I have on pancake turner and wash each day. I used to have a few but only used this one, so the others went away!
I clean as I go as well. I find that if I keep the dishwasher empty and ready for dirty dishes at all times it’s so much easier to keep the kitchen clean. We never have a dirty dish on the counter unless the dishwasher is full and running. And as soon as it’s finished those dirty dishes will be inside. This really takes a lot of work out of cooking. There’s no putting dishes in the sink, then transferring them to the washer, straight in the washer they go.
Making extra like you mentioned is key to being able to eat homemade every night. I often make big pots of soup and we freeze them for quick meals on those days when I’m too busy to cook. It’s no more work to make a double batch of something.
That is so true about the dishwasher, keeping it empty is key to not having the counter stack up with mountains of dirty dishes! Kim
I;d like to ask- when you make extras of something to freeze for those busy nights later on- what do you freeze them in? I have only 3 baking dishes so if I started freezing meals I wouldn’t have anything left to cook in! Just looking for ideas. These are great ones! And I also keep my laptop in the kitchen while baking/trying new recipes and so on!! Glad I’m not the only one!
I have a desperate need to be organized…I have to many good intentions not put to good use!
We are in the middle of remodeling our old house. My pantry is a separate room and will hold all our food. I was trying to figure out how to organize the dishes, pots and pans and utensils and your blog gave me some great ideas. Thank you!
I cook from scratch too and can my food because I do not have refrigeration presently. When I do, I still plan on canning as my freezer will not be that large.
nice post, and i admire you for storing your kitchen gadgets properly and organizing your kitchen. thanks for sharing your ideas and giving us tips on how to deal with our kitchen.
keep it up!