by Eileen Roth
5.Access what you need now by placing the out-of-season containers on the closet’s upper shelf, and then arranging this season’s accessories on the easy-to-reach lower shelf.
If your closet has enough clearance, you can use the back of the door to hang hats and scarves for easy access. A hanging hat rack can do the trick, and Figure 4-1 shows you one way to do it. Unfortunately, this is not an option for folding or sliding doors.
Figure 4-1: Buried in baseball caps? Try a rack inside the front hall closet door to separate or stack your hats.
You can seriously simplify the process of dressing kids for winter by using clips to keep their mittens with their coats. Buy the same color clips and at least one extra set (two if you have four or more children) so that if a clip gets lost, you have a matching replacement on hand. Clip the mittens to the coat each child wears most.
Umbrellas can stand in a corner of the closet, or you can use the handle or loop to hang them on a closet wall hook, over a hanger, or (for the hook-style handles) over the closet rod. If you’re in a rainy spot or season, a stand by the door can receive wet umbrellas; relocate the whole thing to the garage or basement during sunny months.
Keep an umbrella in each car at all times. Talk about needing access — you never know when that sunny day may segue into a downpour. Likewise, put a pair of sunglasses in the glove compartment or car door pocket so you always have glare protection when you drive. See Chapter 21 for more information on organizing your car.
Secret Storage: The back of the front closet
Some front hall closets go extra deep for additional storage behind the row of coats. If you’re one of the lucky ones, use this space to store items that are seasonal or seldom used:
Luggage
Sports gear: tennis rackets, golf clubs, swim and ski equipment
Picnic baskets and coolers
Punch bowls and other entertaining/holiday items
Folding chairs
Archived tax papers and files
The return and repair center
Making returns and taking things to be repaired are rarely at the top of anyone’s fun list. The result can be a forlorn pile by the front door awaiting a willing errand-runner — hardly anyone’s idea of a happy sight. Handle the rejects in your life by establishing a return and repair center in a basket or container kept in the front hall closet. If the volume of items exceeds your closet space, try a spot near the back door instead. Under a sink is another idea, but being so out of sight may put your errand out of mind.
Keep the original receipt in the bag with return items so you don’t have to search the house when it’s time to hit the store.
Hall Table
If you have room, you may elect to put a table in the front hall. A front entry surface is likely to attract items from all who pass by, which makes the table very handy, or an organizational hell, depending on the way you use it. See Table 4-1 for a quick reference about how to optimize your hall table.
Table 4-1:Optimizing Your Front Hall Table Good Uses for the Hall Table: Bad Uses for the Hall Table:
Incoming mail area Mail filing area
Outgoing mail drop Return and repair center
Key depository Anything-goes repository
Communication center for notes
For a power hall table that facilitates flow through the front entryway, find one with a drawer or two to hold and hide keys, sunglasses, and paper and pen for notes. Give the drawers a ruthless cleaning every week and watch this spot like a hawk.
Keeping it neat and moving: The mail center
Even if much of your mail now comes over the Internet, most people arrive home eager to see what the postal service has brought today. Immediate access and proximity to the mailbox make the hall table a good place to sort and distribute incoming mail. The key to good mail handling, in the hall or anywhere, is to keep it neat and moving.
If you live alone, place the mail on the table when you come in and make sure that it moves off by the end of the day. (See Chapter 16 for a sorting system that can speed incoming mail to the proper destination.)
If there are two or three of you, have whoever brings in the mail sort it by recipient. You can stick to simple piles or get fancy with attractive baskets or trays. Again, the rule is that all mail be taken from the table by day’s end.
For a household of four or more, consider buying a small mail sorter. Daily removal of mail from the front hall is even more important for a crowd this size.
Your key center
How many hours of your life have you lost looking for your keys on your way out the door? Having one fail safe storage spot and never yielding to the temptation to put keys somewhere else is an easy cure for the common condition of keylessness. The closest use for keys is near the door or the car, so depending on your setup, your key spot should be the front hall or by the garage door. A drawer in the hall table or key rack on the wall provides the place; you provide the willpower to put your keys in the drawer or on the rack.
Use your head when deciding what keys to carry each day. If you leave the house with 20 pounds’ worth and you don’t work as a jail warden, then lighten your load. Carry just the keys you need, which means you can leave the keys for the storage shed and your spouse’s or children’s cars at home. Keep the office filing cabinet keys . . . you guessed it, at the office.
If your key-toting habits have torn holes in your pockets, don’t toss the garment. Look for half-pockets that you can easily sew in to make your holey pockets whole again . . . then clean out your key ring. Organizing the front entryway is the first step toward achieving a house of high order. Do it and you can consider yourself a member of the cleaned-up club. Congratulations! You crossed the threshold!
Chapter 5
What’s Cooking: Organizing the Kitchen
In This Chapter
Using fingertip management to keep cool while you cook and clean up
Blueprinting your kitchen for big-picture storage
Step-by-step prescriptions to cure kitchen disaster areas
Handling stack attacks in your cabinets
Shopping, meal planning, food storage, and recipe filing techniques
C ooking station, dining area, phone center, study hall, and party hangout, the kitchen is often the most used and multipurpose room in the house. You’re also likely to find yourself in the kitchen when you’re tired, hungry, and short on patience. In such a state, causing an avalanche every time you pull a pan from the cabinet can easily send you running for takeout. The price of a disorganized kitchen can be high — but the payoff of cooling down the hot spot with organizational savvy is sweet. Clean up your kitchen systems to add flow to the heart of your home, and you may find yourself and your family better fed in mind, body, and soul.
Organizing the kitchen can seem like a big job, so don’t try to tackle the task all at once. Choose a single section, such as straightening up the pantry or arranging pots and pans, to get started. Whether you work your way straight through this chapter or skip around from one section to another, your successes can inspire you to continue until everything is in its P-L-A-C-E — the word that summarizes the five steps to cleaning up your kitchen as follows:
Purge: Toss out broken or worn items, from appliances you haven’t fixed to dull kitchen knives that you don’t plan to sharpen. The same goes for outgrown kids’ dishes and cleaning supplies you tried but didn’t like. In the pantry, fridge, and freezer, anything old or unidentifiable goes in the garbage. Say goodbye to expired coupons and untried or unsuccessful recipes. Do you have appliances, dishes, or pans that you don’t use but someone else could? Donate!
Like with like: Group items of similar type together, including dishes, utensils, pots and pans, appliances, and cleaning supplies. Arrange pantry, refrigerator, and freezer shelves like supermarket sections.
Access: Place appliances, dishes, pots and pans, and utensils closest to their most frequent use, cr
eating one-stop centers to make coffee, cook at the stove, serve meals, package leftovers, and wash dishes. Heavier items can go on lower shelves, while lighter things can be kept in cupboards above the countertop. Move seldom-used items to out-of-the-way cabinets or their deepest corners. Sink stuff that you don’t use every day can be stored in the cabinet below. Relocate papers, warranties, receipts, and manuals to the office/household information center (unless you have a kitchen desk) and return toys and books to their original homes.
Contain: Move noneveryday items (appliances, cutting boards, knives) off countertops and into cabinets and drawers. Add dividers to drawers to contain their contents by type. Transfer grain products from boxes and bags to sealed plastic or glass containers. Organize recipes and restaurant reviews into binders and coupons into a 4-x-6 inch file box.
Evaluate: Do you have enough counter space to prep foods, accommodate dirty dishes, and serve meals with ease? Can you make coffee, clean and chop vegetables and get the trimmings into the garbage or disposal, and wash dishes from start to finish — each without taking more than a step? Are you comfortable cooking, eating, and hanging out in the kitchen?
Clearing Off Your Countertops
You may have noticed that working in the kitchen can be akin to aerobic exercise, with all that bending, stretching, reaching, twisting, and the occasional hop to reach a high shelf that most of us do to prepare a simple meal. Working out while you cook may seem like a good idea in theory. However, aerobics rarely feels like a good thing first thing in the morning as you hustle to get everyone fed and out the door, or at the end of a long day when you’re stumbling around bleary-eyed wondering if you can serve dinner from bed.
Surfaces you can see are a good place to start organizing your kitchen, because visible areas have both aesthetic and practical importance. Clear counters provide space to work and promote peace of mind while you cook, as well as looking much nicer than the appliance junkyard that clutters many a kitchen.
Identifying countertop criteria
Access is the key criterion to apply when clearing off countertops. Three cardinal questions can qualify an item, be it an appliance or a knife block, for residence on your counter. Ask yourself
Do you use it every day? If the answer is yes, that’s a countertop contender. Qualifying examples may include the coffeemaker, toaster, microwave, can opener, and knife set. The popcorn popper is probably not on this list, so put the machine away until popping day.
Do they make a convenient under-the-counter version? Kitchen basics from paper towel holders to clock/radios to can openers and even toasters are now made to mount under counters and free up valuable space.
Can the item fit into an easy-access cabinet close to where you use it? If the answer is yes, and this is not an everyday item, you’ve just found its new home. Exception: Take into account the heaviness of the item and the height of the cupboard. You may not mind reaching overhead for a coffee grinder, but wrestling a Mixmaster out of a high or low cabinet is asking for trouble. Leave that behemoth on the counter unless you’re only an occasional baker or have a cabinet that lifts the equipment to counter height. Figure 5-1 gives you an inside view of this inventive new technology.
Figure 5-1: A lifting cabinet to carry heavy equipment up to countertop height.
Photo courtesy of Merillat Industries.
Do you have a specialty appliance you haven’t used in years but are saving for a future someday? It could be a crock-pot, a waffle iron, a donut maker —but whatever the genius idea, someone will have improved upon the appliance by the time you want it again, so go ahead and give the space-waster away.
Arranging the countertop
After passing countertop clearance, an item needs a location. As with any prime real estate, carefully consider the space on your counter, including where an item is most commonly and conveniently accessed. The key to a cool kitchen is fingertip management, in which you arrange everything from soap to soup bowls according to a work center concept of accomplishing basic tasks without taking a step. Apply the fingertip management concept to everything you do to cook, serve, clean up, pack lunches, and unpack groceries. Tap the power of fingertip management in the kitchen, and even making your first cup of morning coffee can get easier. Here are some principles for easy-access counters:
Electrical appliances need to go near an outlet the cord can reach.
Put the toaster near the plate cupboard for easy early-morning serving.
To create a coffee center, situate the coffeemaker somewhere near the sink so you can fill and empty the pot in the same spot. Store the coffee, filters, mugs, sugar bowl, and creamer in a cupboard overhead. For you purists who grind your own, put the grinder and beans here too.
My own coffeemaker is nowhere near the sink because I’m allergic to caffeine and only make coffee for guests. The highest pantry shelf holds my regular coffeemaker, which is easy enough to take down when there’s company. My 30-cup percolator in basement storage rarely comes upstairs, but boy is it handy with a houseful of guests.
A can opener located near the sink makes draining off liquid and wiping up spills nice ’n’ easy.
The microwave should be in easy reach — lifting down hot dishes is a home safety hazard — and near a heatproof surface (tile counter, stovetop, or wooden board). Take into account the direction the door opens and make sure that you have adequate clearance. Microwave carts make a great solution for kitchens with limited counter space.
The food processor, blender, and juicer are swing items. Store them in a cupboard if they’re rarely turned on; otherwise, find a spot on the counter somewhere near the refrigerator, if possible, so ingredients are within close reach.
Clearing off your countertops can have an immediate enlightening effect that inspires the rest of your kitchen makeover. With all this wide-open space, you can shift your focus to the food you’re preparing and the pleasure of the people around you. Do you feel it? Then don’t stop there.
Simplifying Your Sink
The phrase “and the kitchen sink” was coined to describe anything and everything thrown together any which way. If your kitchen sink is in such a state of chaos, simplify. Stand at your sink and ask yourself: What do I do where? Answering that question can help you create your sink centers.
Creating the dishwashing center
If you have a two-sided sink, you probably wash the dishes in one side, and in the other scrape, if the sink has a garbage disposal, or rinse. Start by putting your soap, sponge, scrubber, and brush on the washing side.
Cleaning tools and supplies can get cluttered around the sink pretty quickly, so clutter-busting is definitely in order here. Soap (detergent) and sponges are the usual culprits because they’re used on a regular basis. Soap may make things clean but the process can get messy. Try these ideas for spotless suds:
If your sink boasts a built-in pump for dish soap, use it. This gets the bottle out of the way and provides easier, neater dispensing.
As an alternative, try an attractive pump bottle for the dish soap, one purchased for the purpose or a recycled hand soap bottle (in colors that match your kitchen. To prevent clogging, rinse the spout after use.
Go tubular with a single soap-sponge unit, a sponge attached to a tube that you fill with soap, which means your sponge is always soaped up and ready to go. The downside is that the device can make a soapy mess while lying around, and the tube requires refilling more often than a soap bottle does.
Try a nifty little sponge basket with two suction cups on the back that gloms onto the wall inside the sink and keeps two or more sponges —maybe a soft one for wiping counters and a nylon rib sponge for scrubbing pans — virtually out of sight. See Figure 5-2 for a sponge basket in action.
Presoaped pot scrubbers can go into a raised soap dish with a drain to keep them out of rust-making, soap-leaching water.
You can install a tilt-down panel/drawer at the front of the sink. Just the sp
ot for your sponges.
Figure 5-2: An in-sink sponge holder keeps sponges handy and dry.
Photo courtesy of Get Organized.
Do you really need a vegetable brush out on top of the sink? If you’re actually scrubbing vegetables every day, more power to you — but those of you who eat mostly frozen veggies or packaged salads can move this brush to a nearby drawer.
Under the sink: Cleaning and supply center
The term sinkhole may come to mind when you consider that dark place down under. Rediscover this treasure trove of usable space by setting it up as a cleaning and supply center. Placement is everything under the sink, and if yours is a tangled thicket, think access in front-to-back layers. The front layer includes anything you use every day or so — dishwasher soap, kitchen cleanser, rubber gloves (for those who are good to their hands or their manicures), and a small garbage can for things that don’t go down the disposal. This is also the row for a return/repair center if you keep one here. The next layer is for less-frequently used items such as other cleansers and cleaning supplies, soap refills, and laundry detergent (if you don’t have a laundry room). In the back, put your spare paper towels and sponges. Within each layer, keep like things together, using the left and right sides as natural sub- divisions — for instance, the return/repair center goes on the left, cleansers on the right. Don’t forget to use vertical space by stacking when you can.