If you could change one thing about your home, would it be your kitchen? One of the top complaints from home owners, especially with families, is the size of their kitchen. Luckily, there are tons of small kitchen organization hacks and tips we can implement to completely change the feel and function of any kitchen!
Purge Your Kitchen
The first step to organizing any space is to purge it of things you don’t absolutely love.
Yes, organizing is incredibly important and will be what you notice every day.
After all, who doesn’t love beautifully labeled, uniform jars organized neatly in a cabinet?
To get there, we have to get rid of all of the clutter that stands in our way.
If you have a tiny kitchen, here are some things to purge:
- Duplicates – how many slotted spoons or can openers do you really need?
- One-purpose appliances. Does that slicer or spiralizer really belong on your counter? Or even your toaster? Store these things in an easily accessible cabinet instead, if you choose to keep them at all.
- Pots and pans you hardly ever use – or keep “just in case”
- Any serving platters you don’t use regularly – think about the ones you use only at holidays. Can we put them somewhere else or get rid of them all together?
Products to Make Your Small Kitchen Seem Bigger
The next step is to invest in a couple of products that will make the biggest difference in your everyday life.
To decide what those are, I want you to go into your kitchen and tell me what bothers you the most.
Is it that your spices are falling all over the place in a cabinet and you can never find what you’re looking for?
Is it that your pots and pans are nested inside of each other and getting one out is a huge pain in the butt?
Make a quick list in your head of the changes you would make to your kitchen if you could afford a huge renovation.
What problems would that renovation solve?
For example, you might tell me you want an island or more counter space, but why?
If the answer is to have more prep space, then THAT is the problem we’re going to look to solve with budget-friendly products in your kitchen.
Counter Space
If your issue is the one I just listed above, how to get more counter space in a small kitchen, then let’s try out some of these tips before we go taking down walls and hiring contractors.
What I found in our small kitchen was that I needed to organize basically everywhere except the counters in order to get more space.
Once I organized the cabinets and drawers, I suddenly had more space to put away the stuff that kept getting piled up on the counters which equaled more prep space.
In the meantime, I bought one of these cheap roll away islands.
How to Organize a Small Kitchen without a Pantry
When we lived in 1000 square feet, not having a pantry was at the top of my complaint list.
Not just in the kitchen, but that was one of my biggest problems with the house as a whole.
Why?
Because all of your food has to fit in your cabinets along with your cookware, dinnerware, and ALL the other things in your kitchen.
When your kitchen is small, you already have limited space.
Where are you supposed to put your food??
These are the tips that worked best for me:
Pantry Alternatives
By far, the best decision we made was to take a shelf out of a cabinet and turn one into our new pantry.
We took out one shelf and bought stackable food containers like these.
Don’t get me wrong, they were an investment. We’re ridiculously frugal.
BUT
After talking myself out of them a million times, I finally decided this was so much cheaper than some kind of renovation and without it, nothing was going to change.
So I ordered the stupid things and moved on.
I put these chalk labels on them, emptied all of our cereals, rice, beans, pastas…basically everything that could go into a container went into one.
Suddenly, I would open that cabinet just to enjoy my work.
It was pretty and IT WORKED!
Creating a Pantry in a Small Kitchen
If you still need more space, look into one of these narrow shelves that slide into the space between your fridge and wall.
This thing is so cheap and it makes use of space you would never think to use in your kitchen!
Organizing Kitchen Cabinets without a Pantry
Once I realized what a lifesaver it was to have completely organized dry goods, I was willing to spend a little bit of money to organize the rest of our kitchen.
Seeing is believing with me. I really thought I was just throwing my money away on those containers.
After I saw how well it worked, I figured it was worth the small financial risk to buy some good quality things to organize the rest of the things that annoyed me.
For example, canned goods.
Our cabinets were perfectly sized to fit 1.75 cans stacked on each other.
This meant I could fit one level of cans in each cabinet.
Do you know what a huge waste of space that is?!
Buying a can organizer made a huge difference because it freed up about 50% of the space in that cabinet.
Spice Rack Ideas for Small Kitchens
We cook mostly vegetarian at home so we rely on a ton of spices to give our food lots of flavor and nutrients
Our spices were always scattered all over in one of the skinny cabinets we had.
It had three shelves, but the tallest one required a small step ladder for me to reach and nothing was convenient.
Our spices were constantly falling over and I was annoyed.
Plus, I kept buying the same spices because I always thought I was out.
I seriously had 3 containers of turmeric because of that stupid cabinet.
I saw this magnetic option on Pinterest, but it seemed so expensive!
Plus they mounted it to their wall and I simply didn’t have a wall to dedicate to this.
Then I found these awesome things that I could put on our fridge.
That freed up an entire cabinet!
Spices are probably the smallest thing you have in your kitchen, but they take up so much room because we let them.
Stick them to the side of your fridge and move on!
Clever Storage Ideas for Small Kitchens
After you’ve implemented the steps above, then it’s just all about organizing what’s left.
For us, that was a solution for pots and pans, managing chaos in the drawers, and stopping the madness in the fridge and freezer while we were at it.
Pots and Pans Storage Rack
This sturdy pots and pans rack was the best $20 I’ve spent.
I just checked and it’s even cheaper on Amazon right now.
I swear I had PTSD from pulling those pans out of our cabinet because I still hold my breath and wait for pans to fall when I get one out.
Less than $10 for this thing and my pan lids and cookie sheets were never a problem again.
Kitchen Drawer Organizing Ideas
I went a little crazy at Dollar Tree buying drawer organizers.
Some things worked and others didn’t.
Finally, I realized I’m not in the stage of life to have these perfectly labeled and organized kitchen drawers..and I’m okay with that.
Instead of going crazy trying to keep everything perfect, I started throwing things away.
I bought this measuring cup and spoon set that I love, and I threw the rest in the sandbox for my kids to play with.
I kept three spatulas in various sizes and threw the rest away.
The one thing I will NEVER EVER part with is this awesome flipper.
I literally can’t make eggs or grilled cheese without it.
Everything else, I took a good look at and got rid of about 75% of what was in our drawers.
This alone keeps them organized.
Refrigerator Organization
While it doesn’t have much to do with a small kitchen (unless you have a small refrigerator), organizing our fridge really helped us to stop wasting so much money on food.
When you can see what you have, you use what you have.
What is your biggest issue in your small kitchen? If money weren’t an issue, what would you do to improve your kitchen? Hop over to Instagram and let me know in the comments!
