How to Organize Your Kitchen Drawers

A few weeks ago on the blog we talked all about getting your spices and baking supplies organized for holiday baking (here) but they are not the only part of your kitchen that can use a refresh before the latke or gingerbread men making beings. So today, in the spirit of preparing for holiday cooking and baking we are diving into kitchen drawer organization.

Kitchen drawers can be tricky! It is so easy to let them become a black hole of measuring spoons, zesters, pizza cutters and zoodlers and a downright hazard when you stick your hand in to try and find something. With a little decluttering, sorting and some organization products you can transform your drawers to a chef’s (or maybe just a macaroni and cheese maker’s) dream. Here are a few of my go to tips and products for kitchen drawer organization.

Tips for Kitchen Drawer Organization

The most important thing to do when organizing your kitchen drawers is take everything out – yes EVERY SINGLE THING! One of the biggest problems with kitchen drawers is the just have too much stuff that isn’t needed either at all or in the kitchen.
Once you have laid out everything from your kitchen drawer (or drawers if you are tackling more than one) it is time to categorize. Think through how you are going to organize your kitchen drawers. Are you going to have a baking focused drawer? A cooking drawer? A most used tools drawer? From there group like items together into the different categories.
Once you have the categories in place it will be so much easier to take stock of what you have on hand and purge items that you no longer need. As you can see in the before picture below it can be easy to accumulate more items than you need – did this family really need to juicers? No!
Kitchen drawers can be come a dumping ground – we are all guilty of pushing something in a drawer when company comes over or just to get the counters clear. If there are certain items that you are not quite ready to purge then find them a new home. For the kitchen in the pictures below, we relocated several items that are not used very often like the mandoline. It was taking up a lot of space in the drawer but is only used a couple times a year. A bin in a cabinet or pantry is a great place to stash those items and clear up space in your drawers.
After you have narrowed down the items that will go back into the drawers it is time to measure the drawer to decide what products will work best for organization. If you need help measuring your space sign up for my newsletter list here – you will get a freebie will walk you through how to measure.
Now that you have measure the space you can shop for your organizing products. I have linked some of my favorites below and it can be helpful to get a few more than you need do you can try out different arrangements in the drawers. Depending on the depth of your drawers and what you are putting back in the space you will want a mix of drawer dividers and drawer organizers. Don’t forget that the space outside the organizers can be just as useful as within it – as you can see in this drawer here we used the narrow space next to the organizers to give the knife sharpener a home.
Once you have the organizers in place it is time to put everything back in the drawers.
Then sit back, admire your handy work and get ready for all that holiday cooking and baking!