Organizing the kitchen drawer

zieak ♦ February 22, 2011 ♦ Leave Your Comment

One of the tenants of the Game On Diet is to take on a new good habit. For this round my habit is to organize one thing for at least 30 minutes each day. I decided to organize the kitchen drawer that has most of the miscellaneous cooking and serving utensils in it. Sometimes I open up that drawer and just stare at it trying to see what I’m looking for. Here’s a simulated before shot. (Simulated because I had actually already emptied it and sorted the drawer so the normal chaos is definitely not represented!)

So I emptied the drawer out and sorted through the stuff. I gathered the things that could go to the thrift store and bagged them up. I checked the other drawers, the sink and the dishwasher to make sure I wasn’t missing anything and then I started organizing the remaining utensils. I sorted those piles into a somewhat logical arrangement. I knew I wanted the most frequently used items in the front of the drawer I also paid attention to the width of the utensils and was sure to put similar sized items in a column together so the construction of the dividers would be easier.

Then I used some thin birch plywood that we’ve been using for our Scrabble Tile Coasters to make the vertical dividers. I ended up making the horizontal spacers out of small pieces of red cedar. I used my brad nailer to connect the spacers and the dividers working from one side to the other. I put additional spacers that alternated openings on either end so that the dividers would be fixed on both ends of the drawer.

Then I put almost all of the utensils back in the drawer!

Clockwise from top left; bag clips and other oddballs, tongs, garlic presses & cheese cutter, more small oddballs, long oddballs, teaspoon & tablespoon measures, serving spoons, spatulas, pizza cutters and bottle stoppers, rubber and wood spatulas and our whisk.

A few things were moved to the adjacent drawer that has the spoons and forks. Primarily the wine corkscrews and bottle openers but also a pair of wooden salad servers that were just too big and bulky for anywhere. They join the kitchen scissors and the can opener. I also sorted through the drawer below the one I made this organizer for. It has utensils for the grill like large tongs and spatula, kabob skewers, cedar planks and other grilling stuff as well as our ladles and potato masher (that are too large to fit in the thinner top drawer) and fancy serving utensils – the kind of stuff you get out to serve salad when company is over.

I really liked working on tidying up that drawer. If only I could figure out how to better arrange the pots, pans, and lids or the collection of plasticware that always seems to end up losing lids…