The kitchen is the one place in your home where you store food, prepare ingredients, cook meals, clean up messes — and yes, enjoy your finished dishes with family and friends as well.
If you spend a lot of time in your kitchen (presumably, you're the designated home chef that whips up all the yummy meals and snacks), then you know how even the smallest details can affect the way you perform tasks and work in this space.
The kitchen contains food (both fresh ingredients and stuff in cans and bottles), utensils, pots and pans, containers and packaging items, appliances, storage spaces, and other must-haves. Therefore, the way you design or decorate this space must allow for each item to have its own spot, so that you can maximise your time and effort as you putter between the kitchen sink, the refrigerator, the pantry, the countertop where you do your prep work, and the stove or oven where you actually cook the meals.
Ready to do your magic in the kitchen in a more efficient way? Then check out the top 4 design/decor hacks that can make working in your kitchen a whole lot easier.
Be smarter about storage.
The number one enemy of home cooks everywhere is lack of organisation in the kitchen. With so many supplies and tools stored in this space, it can be a challenge to find everything you need while you're cooking, and a hassle to put them all back in different areas after cleanup.
The key is to maximise every inch of space you have. You can then group like items together so that you you'll know where to find everything you need, and you can also keep the items that you use most frequently in storage spaces that are closest to the sink, countertop or stove — this keeps everything within easy reach when it's cooking time.
Here are some great organisation hacks you can try:
- Create hidden cabinets in your kitchen island for items you don't regularly use and are difficult to store (like extra appliance attachments, specialty plates and things you only use for certain occasions).
- Attach hooks on the inside of cabinet doors to hang racks and baskets where you can store cleaning supplies or rolls of paper towels.
- Install additional drawers at toe-level under the pantry for baking supplies like muffin tins, cookie sheets and cooling racks.
- Create roll-out pantry shelves in awkward spaces for extra storage for canned goods.
- Use mason jars to store herbs and spices and label each one so they can be easy to find in a single place.
- Hang racks or baskets in the vertical space inside shelves for additional storage.
- Insert thin boards as partitions inside cabinets so you can slip pot lids, cutting boards and other large items.
- Add hooks and racks inside cabinets where you can hang pots and pans by their handles.
Organise your appliances.
Aside from the refrigerator and the stove or oven, most kitchen appliances are small ones that you place on the countertop (toasters, coffee makers, waffle makers, blenders, etc.). These can create clutter and will take up space, especially if you don't use them all often. It's a great idea to create a small nook for them, like a small cupboard, so they can be kept out of sight and out of the way when not in use. This frees up valuable countertop space.
Create a designated spot for your kids' snacks.
In households with kids, snack time after school can be a chaotic time if they are used to pulling their food out from different areas in the kitchen at the same time. To prevent unnecessary clutter and to keep them away from areas where they can get hurt (areas with hot appliances or sharp utensils), put all of the snack items in one easy-access cupboard or drawer so they'll only gravitate toward one spot in the kitchen to get their snacks.
Install a pull-out trash can.
Prepping meals and snacks can produce lots of scraps and trash. Having a trash bin standing open and exposed in one corner of the kitchen can be unsightly and unsanitary. A great alternative would be to create a designated pull-out drawer for it so that you can keep all the discarded wrappers, vegetable scraps and other trash out of sight and safely separated from your meals.
Find out more kitchen hacks and solutions from top Australian kitchen brands here.