Tame Kitchen Drawer Madness!

Please explain to me how kitchen drawers can collect so much crap?! Over the years, ours housed some unique kitchen pieces, duplicate kitchen tools, kitchen tools I thought I needed, kitchen do-dads I wanted, etc.  Every time I was in a store with a kitchen gadget section, I was sure to buy one.  And Pampered Chef – I bought A LOT of their stuff.  Things I felt I couldn’t live without – a citrus zester?  Sure!  A melon baller – of course!  A dough dowel?  I can’t believe I never owned one!  (Have I mentioned I’m not much of a chef?)

So when it came time to find something, unless it was an everyday item, good luck!  It was time to purge.

This is what each drawer looked like after it was emptied:

And this is what the contents were of one (yes one!) drawer:

Purging, which I thought would be hard to do, was actually very EASY!  Maybe because I was so frustrated with all the mess?  In the end we donated 3 boxes of kitchenware hoping someone could get some use out of them.

After that process, I cleaned up each of the drawers and re-lined them with my favourite shelf liner (I picked it up at TJ Maxx in Florida and I can’t find an online source but if it helps, the company name is called ‘Macbeth Collection’):

After being ruthless with what we kept, I had a better idea of what organizers I needed so I did what I do best – shop! HomeSense and Winners (HomeGoods and TJ Maxx are the US equivalents) were a treasure trove of utensil organizing – they had so many choices!  Because our kitchen accent colour is red, I went with white and red cutlery organizers that had a neat feature – you could rearrange the different sized trays in whatever configuration suited you best!  (Side note:  Make sure your little one doesn’t see them – otherwise they may end up in the toy bin and heaven help you if you try to take them)

Here’s how I configured the first drawer:

It holds your usual utensils (forks, knives, spoons), a few things like bag clips, bottle openers and scissors.  The next drawer holds measuring cups, basting brushes, a can opener and the ever important ice cream scoop:

The last drawer holds meat thermometers (you saw right, there are three of them!  Ask John), plus a mix of different cooking spoons and tools:

Isn’t that better?  No jamming, rummaging or anything needed.  What I also like is that these organizers can be changed up if your needs change which is a huge bonus to the original wire organizers I started with.  Note, I was NOT paid to chat about my love for these drawer organizers – they truly are awesome and last time I looked, they had more colours!  (I drooled over the mint coloured verison)

It feels so good to look at these photos – and the best part?  No one has asked me where any kitchen related tool is anymore – although apparently I should have kept the zester (again, ask John).

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