Having moved the entire contents of our kitchen three times in the past 2 years, I was increasingly fed up with finding four almost-empty packets of pearl barley lurking various dark corners of the kitchen, or having to empty an entire cupboard to find the dark brown sugar. So, before our final house move a few months ago, I decided to get organised.
Pinterest, as usual, was a fantastic source of inspiration and provided free templates and instructions for my three main projects:
1. Glass Storage Jars (pictured above) These make a great display as the focal point of the kitchen - the colours of the grains, pulses, pasta etc. against a bold, black typeface are striking, and having basic storecupboard ingredients out on display rather than hidden in a cupboard is a great source of inspiration for new ideas and recipes.
Instructions and free printables are available from this fantastic tutorial on interiors blog A Painted Hive I picked up large jars from charity shops, IKEA and supermarkets, and then using waterslide decal paper bought from EBay. (I'm quite chuffed with my DIY carpentry project in the shelves - cheap B&Q brackets and shaker pegs from EBay. Amazing what a lick of paint can hide!)
2. Magnetic Spice Rack on the inside of a kitchen cupboard door.
Once again this was an idea found on Pinterest, courtesy of Bob Vila (photo no. 4 on slideshow).
I bought Grundtal magnetic spice tins from IKEA and painted half of the lid in matt black paint, then used a white paint pen to write on the names of the spices, to give a blackboard effect. Self-adhesive magnetic strips are easy to come by on EBay.
The placement of the rows was a bit of a fiddle in order to be able to close the cupboard door, but what a great way to save on shelf space, and to have spices within easy reach, out on display and even alphabetically arranged!
3. Storage Box Labels for plastic containers. I now keep all my flours, sugars, dried fruit, nuts and seeds in these handy clip-lock storage containers. It keeps them so much fresher than leaving them in half-empty bags, and makes everything easy to find.
Guess what - another idea from Pinterest. These are free printable labels which I printed, cut out and then stuck onto the storage containers with large squares of sticky-backed plastic. These certainly aren't waterproof/washable, but as they only contain dried ingredients that hasn't yet caused any problems.
So there you go - a glimpse into my rather geeky kitchen storage solutions. How do you keep your kitchen organised?
These ideas are amazing and very helpful for me. Thanks for sharing such nce ideas.
Hey Kate, my kitchen is also 'kind of' geeky too... Think kitchen utensils hanging above my stove. Glass splashbacks above the stove to prevent cooking splashbacks, floating shelves to house crockery. You know what I mean! Haha. Brownie points for you Kate; I also store my herbs and spices in alphabetical order haha!
Kate! This weekend I nearly bought a 40 jar spinning spice rack thingy (designed to sit on my work surface...in my imaginary new kitchen). Decided against it as imagined the dust and kitchen splatters mounting up...another thing to clean! Then I thought, what would Kate do and remembered seeing this blog post a while ago! Such a good idea for storing spices! When my imaginary kitchen becomes a reality I will be doing this!! I'm also going to start looking out for jars to store things like cous cous, rice etc...love the idea of making a feature out of food stuffs! Hope all is well! Keep going with the blog...it's fab! xx
Haha - that's fab, I love my magnetic spice rack, so nice being able to see them all on display and doesn't waste any cupboard or worktop space! Daren't ask how the house progress is going, hope you'll be in your dream kitchen very soon! Ikea was fab for big jars, and a few from ASDA too.