How to Organize Your Kitchen

Series Summary

Procrastination and housekeeping should be synonymous, or at least interchangeable, in the dictionary. Keeping a home organized can be quite a challenge with parents’ and kids’ busy schedules to contend with. Cleaning a home usually means starting from scratch, which can be the biggest issue in starting the task at all. Organization skills can be learned to create effective habits of putting things where they go the first time. In this free video series, avoid dreaded, all-day house-cleaning sessions with daily or weekly organizational tips from a professional organizer. Learn to organize the kitchen and a child's closet and to create a household organizer to keep notes for everyone in the family. Next, discover ways to organize a bookshelf, linen closet, laundry center and home entryway. Finally, get tips on organizing a kid's room, maintaining order in a studio or small apartment and becoming organized one minute at a time.

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Ann Myrick and today I'm going to tell you how to organize your kitchen. Kitchens are very personal to the person that runs and works in the kitchen. And, there are people that love to have everything out, where they don't have to go hunt it. And then there's people that like it all clean. So, that, taking into consideration that everybody's different, and everybody knows how they like to work, and how they like to run the kitchen. But, one of the things that is important about a kitchen, is you want to keep it clean and you want to be able to have areas where you can work. Let's take into consideration just this area right here. You have a bread basket that's needed, but you have cups that really aren't needed. And so what I would do, is I would take away everything that is really not used. Now we will display, and we will make it look nice and fun. But what you want to do is just really, really clean up. And first, put, use or put in your kitchen what you're really going to use. So the bread box is needed, and then over here we have soap, soap dish, and candle. Candle's really not needed. I think it was just put over here. Soap dish has nothing in it, so we just get rid of that. Soap is important, we'll just keep the soap. And, in working with your kitchen, decide what is really needed. Do you like your paper towels out, or can they go up? Do you need your coffee pot out? Most people do. Most people like it by the sink where you can put the water in immediately, so the coffee pot will probably stay out. Do we need several candles on the counter? We really don't. So, candles are really nice, but, your kitchen really needs to be an area where you need to be able to pull something out, put it on the counter, and work with it. There are several cleaning things that we can move. A lot of times, what I find a lot of times is people will have oils and vinegars and tomatoes, and things that are canned that are supposed to look decorative, but it's like three or four years old, and they look old and they've browned. And so it's better, instead of keeping those, just get 'em away. I mean, just throw 'em away. So, just go through your counters, look at your kitchen and see what's really...needs to be used. This is Ann Myrick, and that is how to organize your kitchen."