How I Organize My Kitchen To Make It More Functional & Easy To Maintain

In this video, I'm going to take you through the process of how I reorganize our kitchen while keeping things accessible and clutter-free. The goal here is not to make the kitchen into a showroom, but to make it neat and functional, and most importantly, easy to maintain. There's no point having a pretty kitchen that only stays pretty for a month, and then starts falling apart. The kitchen was previously in a bit of a sorry state, sauces and ingredients all over the place and deep in the cabinets, disorganized cutleries in the drawers, pans stacking on top of one another, and plates and bowls that are also all over the place. There are four key things that I find very important. The kitchen has to be enjoyable to use and cook in. Most frequently used items have to be easy to get to. Every tool and ingredient should have a defined space within the zones they belong in, and they should be somewhat visible. Things are easy to maintain and won't fall apart after just a few weeks. The focus is on function, not a kitchen for Instagram. In order to achieve this, I've divided the process into six steps. Clarify. Zone the spaces. Edit. Group items and shop. Decant and label. And organize. Step 1. Clarify. Before we start decluttering and organizing, it's always good to get clarity on who and what the kitchen is actually for. What specific function does your kitchen need to serve? Who actually uses it? How can your kitchen better support these functions? In my experience, this kitchen is for my partner who makes home-cooked meals every day and likes to experiment on new recipes. We also live in a somewhat regional place, so we often buy dry goods and sauces that we cannot source locally in bulk to reduce the number of shopping trips. I personally love tea and coffee, so we also needed a spot for all my coffee and tea gears. Step 2. Zone your spaces. For us, we divided the kitchen into six zones. Washing and prepping. Cooking. Food storage. Breakfast and dry pantry staples. And coffee and tea. When you divide them into zones and have the functions in mind, the next steps are going to be infinitely easier. Step 3. Edit and decide what to keep and part with. Start by relocating items that don't belong in the kitchen. Then, empty cabinets and drawers. In order to avoid being overwhelmed, we did this one area at a time. I started with the cooking area, which is the most troublesome of all, and then slowly moved to different zones one at a time. While doing this, I also somewhat do step 6, which is to organize, but only to an extent that helps me take inventory of what I have, and not leave it in a jumbled mess so I don't create double the work for myself. It is hard to get it completely organized right away, because we still didn't have the measurements and haven't shopped for all the right organization products. If you're having trouble decluttering, I've actually written a very easy framework in my past newsletter that you can apply to any room which you can check out in the description below. The whole process took about 5 days in total, but we're able to use the kitchen normally throughout the process as we tackle one small area at a time. If you have a smaller kitchen, then go ahead and do everything all at once like what I did in my previous apartment kitchen makeover. We also did some minor modification, like removing these pre-installed bars on the open cabinet which I assume was meant to be used for plates, but are not functional at all. Step 4. Group items and shop. Group the items or tools you use for each task together for efficiency. For us, we have so many different types of flours, sauces, and spices, so we group all of them separately all within the cooking zone. Choose whatever grouping technique works best for your lifestyle. I then place the items within the zone where we perform that function, so spices are kept by the cooking zone, not in a drawer far away from the stove. Once I have clarity on all this, it is time to shop for container and organization products. We actually brought most of our organization and containers from our old place, but also had to buy some new ones, since we needed to store more ingredients as we no longer live in the city and no longer doing takeouts. Step 5. Decant and label. The last two steps are the most enjoyable for me personally, as this is where I get to see the fruits of my labor. We decant most of the dry ingredients like rice, beans, flours, and all the spices. One neat trick I learned is to cut out the expiry date for stuff that you don't use as often, and just place it on the inside of the container. One important thing I learned from my previous kitchen organization is to only decant and label frequently used dry ingredients or those that I buy in bulk. Back then, I obsessively decanted everything, and spent half the time just maintaining the kitchen, or it will fall apart within weeks. This is why we left all the sauces the way they are, and we even have a dedicated drawer for different types of dried noodles, because for us, it is much easier that way. Once everything is in the container, it is time to label them. I'm going to use the Krikkat Maker 3 for this, who is the sponsor of today's video. Before I show you the step by step process, I'm going to first unbox and test out the machine. For those who didn't know, Krikkat is a smart cutting machine that you can use in a plethora of craft projects. They have a very intuitive app where you can design and personalize almost anything, and there are also plenty of projects you can browse from in their library if you're stuck for ideas. Now that we know it's working, it is time to design the labels. My partner who uses the kitchen most of the time, requested something a bit more whimsical and shiny. We browsed and found this font called DTC Bikini Bape, and decided to use them for labeling the big jars, together with the smart vinyl in champagne color to give it that shine. I input all the labels in Krikkat's app and resize them accordingly so that the text will fit our jars and containers. A quick tip here is to find the longest word. Ours is seasoning, and make sure the length of that is roughly the width of the container. Once the design was complete, I simply followed the on-screen instructions to load in the vinyl and send them to the machine to do the magic. Here, you can see the precise cuts made by the machine. Now, what we need to do is transfer those onto the containers. To make the next steps easier, I started by cutting the excess material using the pourable trimmer, and then peeling off the excess vinyl so all that is left are the cutouts. You'll notice that some words like A, O, and R have an inside that needs to be removed. What we need to do is weed them using the weeding tool to remove the negative pieces around the cut. It actually feels really satisfying to peel them off. Once that is done, it is time to transfer them onto the container using the Krikkat transfer tape. Cut them to fit the words, paste, and then use a spatula to get them to stick to the tape. Lift it up and paste it onto the container. Remember to clean the container or wipe them down so that the vinyl sticks much easier. We repeated this process for all the containers we plan to store on the open shelf. When it comes to the spices, I thought something more minimal would suit better as the surface area is much smaller. So, that's essentially what I did and repeated the same process with the design and machine. It is always fun watching the machine do the cuts. I use the same jars that I've been using for years which I got from Amazon. I'll link them down in the description if you're along with every kitchen organization products. They also come with this handy spout which makes it really easy to pour your spices in. Again, I followed the same steps here. Cut excess material, remove excess vinyl, remove the negative pieces, and transfer them onto the spice jars. The smaller it gets, the trickier it is to get the job done. So, just a warning to everyone who tries to use very thin and small fonts. This labeling process took quite some time, but I think the end result is worth the effort. The spice drawer looks really nice and the champagne colored label looks especially nice when light hits at an angle. Step 6. Organize. My principle when organizing the kitchen is to always keep function on top of mind. In general, heavier items should be placed in lower cabinets. Within each cabinet, most frequently used items in the front. Daily use items should be placed on the bottom shelves of the upper cabinet or upper drawer of the countertop. Less frequently used items can go on the top shelf of upper cabinets. Special occasion items such as holiday platters or roasting pans that is used every few months should be relegated to the most difficult to access location within your kitchen. Another option is to keep them in storage outside the kitchen. Let's start with the cooking area, from left to right. The first cupboard is where we store all the pans and cookwares. I got an adjustable pan organizer from Amazon, which I can expand to perfectly fit the bottom shelf. This allowed us to stand the pans vertically, which makes it very easy to access and store. This is much better than before when pans were just stacked on top of one another. On the upper shelf, I simply added shelf inserts to divide them. This is where we keep most of the taller and deeper cookwares. The drawers to the left of the oven is where we keep most of the dinnerware that is not plates and drinks. Since we have an assortment of stuff in different sizes, I got an adjustable pegboard from Amazon that we can customize to fit our stuff. This is totally game changing as it allows us to maximize the drawers in a way that was not possible before. I simply adjusted the pegs to the size required for each of our dinnerware. And we now have a dedicated spot for everything and more importantly, they are not stacked on top of one another, which makes it much more accessible. I also did the same thing for the middle drawers, so we have a dedicated spot for our frequently used items. The bottom drawer is used to store our juicer and large mixing bowls. The drawer to the right of the oven is our spice drawer, as you have seen before. Middle drawer is everything packet related, which I simply grouped into packet sauces, Vietnamese seasonings that comes in these little boxes, and the big stuff like fried shallots, toppings and meat floss. Bottom drawer is for all the dried noodles. Despite looking messy, we found that it actually works better for us rather than having 20 different containers that we have to top up every week. In the corner cupboard, we stored all the excess dry goods we bought in bulk. Ready-made sauces in jars tucked neatly, a lazy Susan for some extra sauces not often used, jasmine rice and Japanese rice, and some more dried goods. We utilized long storage containers for all excess dried ingredients, so that everything is grouped neatly and easily accessible. The upper cabinet is where we store all sauces and cooking ingredients, since it is the most easily accessible. A turntable is our best friend here, which allowed easy access to everything and all within an arm's reach to the stove. The open cabinet to the right is used to store all the flours and dried ingredients that we need more frequent access to. Similarly, everything here is arranged with the most frequently used items on the lower shelf and in front. Moving on to the sink area, this is relatively okay even before this, but I just added some tubs and stackable drawers to make everything more organized. I also got a dish rack that is very useful for times when we don't have many dishes. It is extendable, which is very handy, and also has a spout that drains excess water into the sink. The corner cupboard beside the sink is used to sort things like onions, garlic, and potatoes, as well as rice since we always buy them in bulk. I also kept many of the excess containers here. This side of the kitchen is all about the coffee and tea area. This is where I spend a couple minutes every morning to start my day, as well as noon and night occasionally to make a cup of tea. Inside the cupboard is not the best looking, but it is very functional and everything is readily and easily accessible for my needs. The far corner is where we store all excess items like glass and extra containers, since it is quite hard to reach that side. Moving on to our fridge, again, it is not the prettiest, but it is realistic and very functional for what we need. Turntable is also my best friend here, and we utilize bins and extra drawers to keep things organized. The pantry to the right used to be a jumbled mess of snacks and appliances, and I simply reorganized them so the top pantry is purely for everything breakfast related and dry goods like instant noodles. Snacks are stored on the upper drawer, which I divided into sections just so everything makes sense. This adjustable drawer divider is also really handy to divide your drawers. Bottom two drawers are medicine cabinet and barbecue related stuff. The last section is the food storage section. This is where I store all the cutleries, as well as ziplocks, containers, paper, and foils. Again, we compartmentalize each drawer so that everything makes sense, but not overly organized to the point that it is hard to keep up. My goal is to just make everything accessible and flow seamlessly with how we use the kitchen. With systems in place and a home for everything, it becomes easy to maintain the kitchen, and that is how I liked it to be. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to check out my video on home organization hacks and things to avoid if you hate cleaning. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.