If you love your kitchen and use it alot.

[justLisa]

I don't mean necessarily high end. But do you have a beautifully organized, function kitchen that you love? How?

 

I think I suffer from looking at too many magazine photo ops. Well, not really. In reality I always think, there must be no cook in that kitchen. I cook alot. I bake bread, which is messy and my kitchenade mixer weighs a ton so of course I leave it out. I use my vitamix all the time too and leave it out, along with our espresso maker and toaster. Next to my stove I have a shallow drawer, and then two really deep drawers which i'm guessing are meant for pots, but I don't use it for that. I don't knwo what to store in them. I also have a walk in pantry that I recently gutted, painted and re-did.

 

I can't figure out a simple method of keeping a large quantity of flour at hand for baking. I don't like the idea of huge glass canisters on the counter because it's just more to dust/wipe down.

 

Anyone have an inspiring kitchen to share? I have an L-shape layout, with too much distance between one counter (which has a bar behind it) and the other with the stove, but not enough for a large island. I have an IKEA small butcher block island thing in the middle which works well.

[Rebecca VA]

I have a 50 lb. capacity plastic food-grade bucket (purchased from Container Store) in my kitchen just for flour. It's not beautiful, but it's extremely convenient. I order the flour from Whole Foods (organic white with wheat germ added) in 50 lb. bags.

[ktgrok]

I'm redoing mine now. I think the flour and such are going to go in the cabinet to the right of my stove, in canisters. Or, I will but them in canisters and put the canisters in the big deep drawers you speak of. I have those too. My issue is figuring out where to put my daughter's plastic dishes, as I don't have room to put them in with ours.

[SailorMom]

I like Alton Brown's idea that you should A)only keep things you use, and B) only buy "multi-taskers" - i.e., every tool should be useful for more than one or two things.

So - pare down. A Lot. If you can't part with it, then find a place other than the kitchen to store it . For example - only use that electric knife to carve the turkey once a year? Then it can go in a closet somewhere.

Try to store the stuff you do use where all the other stuff vacated.

I do use my big drawers for pots and pans and their lids - so much more organized than a cupboard...

Also - my kitchen is so fast to clean, even though it is big, because other than the microwave and the toaster, there isn't anything else on the counters.

If you don't use it EVERYDAY, put it somewhere other than the counters. Even if you use it frequently, but not everyday, put it away. Trust me, the time you save cleaning around everything is well worth it :)

[AK_Mom4]

We keep our flour in a 5-gallon metal popcorn tin. DH refills in when needed, but it's handy in the corner cabinet when we are cooking. Sugar is stored in a one-gallon glass jar with a lid.

 

The only cool thing about my kitchen is that I can store my step stool under the island. I am too short to reach the upper (or even middle!) shelves without it and it's great to have a place to keep it handy but not underfoot.

[justLisa]

I'm redoing mine now. I think the flour and such are going to go in the cabinet to the right of my stove, in canisters. Or, I will but them in canisters and put the canisters in the big deep drawers you speak of. I have those too. My issue is figuring out where to put my daughter's plastic dishes, as I don't have room to put them in with ours.

 

 

I love the idea of using the big drawer for flours and sugars. I hate lugging the big buckets out of the pantry, and I just don't like them on the counters. The tubs I have for flour right now are just a smidgen to tall for my drawer but maybe i'll get a different kind. It would be great to just open the drawer, and scoop out. The thing is, I bake a lot, so certain things that I go through quickly I like to keep handy. I know alot of resources say don't keep anything in the cupboards beside the microwave/oven, but I dn't notice mine going bad or getting very warm. I only keep frequently used items there and in smaller quantity.

 

About the kid dishes, I don't have many anymore as mine are alittle older but when i had more of them I kept them in a plastic bin in a lower cabinet next to the dishwasher where I keep my mess of tupperware.

[LaxMom]

I have a 50 lb. capacity plastic food-grade bucket (purchased from Container Store) in my kitchen just for flour. It's not beautiful, but it's extremely convenient. I order the flour from Whole Foods (organic white with wheat germ added) in 50 lb. bags.

 

Yup, though I won't even lie: when I kept flour, it was in a flip-top dog food bin from Target. (it held 25lbs, and the other 25 was stored in the freezer)

 

I use 8oz, quart and half gallon canning jars for spices, smallish "working" quantity dry goods (dried fruit, split peas, etc), and grains and beans, respectively. I write the contents and/or directions (type of rice and water to rice ratio, for instance) in sharpie on the glass.

[LucyStoner]

I am not in love with the looks of my kitchen (think current trendy- granite, cherry finish cabinets, wood floors, stainless and black appliances) but it is well organized and heavily used.

 

I like that it is smaller so that things are usually within reach. I like that that I have lazy susans in the deep corner cabinets to allow me to use all of the space. Those lazy susans have my at hand stash of flour, sugar, baking stuff, legumes, pasta, oil etc. Also, a section of one is for bread. I like that we have pull out racks installed in the cabinets for things like the recycle bin, cookie sheets, pie plates etc. I like that our knives and most commonly used utensils are on 2 magnet strips on the wall. I like that it is uncluttered and I don't have duplicates of things, making for what I see a lot in hard to use kitchens- clutter of unneeded duplicates. Also, there is nothing in the kitchen that does not belong in the kitchen. Papers, mail, school stuff, tools, hh junk is NOT cluttering my kitchen counters or drawers. If there is a book or printed material in the kitchen it is cooking related. One thing that helps is that every night the counters get wiped down and the sink washed out. So when we come into the kitchen the next day, it is ready to use. I also only keep a few key small appliances on the counters, and store the rest away in the deep cabinet that is above the fridge.

 

So, on the counter we have:

 

Espresso maker

Coffee maker

toaster

 

Also on the counter but not appliances:

 

Compost scrap bin

our teensy garbage pail

an old fashioned photolab timer we use as a kitchen timer

 

 

The rule is that to stay out taking up real estate, it needs to be used DAILY.

 

The electric tea kettle, kitchenaid stand mixer, crockpot, ice cream maker, blender, food processor et al live out of sight. Gives me more working space on the counters and putting the small appliances away is not hard. Even the heavy kitchenaid. We use all of those things except for the ice cream maker and the blender often (kitchenaid at least 1x a week, maybe more; food processor at least weekly, tea kettle almost daily but not quite etc) but it makes it so much nicer to get them OFF of the counters.

 

My pantry is around the corner from the kitchen which I am not wild about. But if I could change anything about my kitchen with the wave of a wand, it would be to have a totally different color scheme and no stainless, with a tile or mosiac backsplash rather than a granite one.) Just not my style but we bought new construction 5 years ago so that is what it is. Really not worth changing.

Edited March 26, 2012 by kijipt