Wrangling Kitchen Tools

There are quite a few organizing methods and tricks that I learned basically by osmosis from my parents.   In fact, most of my family is in no way surprised that I’ve made organizing into my life’s work, and trace the genetic talent straight to my dad.  He’s so organized that his home office doesn’t have a door that shuts, and you can’t tell someone works from the desk unless his laptop is open!

Once example of the incredibly organized environment in which I grew up: I didn’t know until shockingly late in life that not all kitchen drawers come pre-made with useful dividers.  Every drawer in our house, in both kitchens and bathrooms, was custom designed for the tools and products it would store.  Moving into my first apartment was an eye opener in many regards, but the sad state of my scattered silverware drawer was certainly one of them.

To this day, I still have not had kitchen drawers with built in dividers.  As it turns out, custom cabinetry is not cheap.  Oh, my sheltered childhood.

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Enter inexpensive drawer dividers, such as the ones I own from Crate and Barrel.  This version works perfectly for silverware, and this version works for the variety of lengths of kitchen tools that exist, as well as small items like measuring spoons that defy categorization. 

As with organizing most other things, drawer dividers work best if you group items by function first, and then size if space allows.  There is certainly some discipline required in that you do need to get in the habit of returning things to the exact spot they came from, but the more specific that spot is, the easier it is to create the habit.  And once you do get in that habit, you’ll save so much time that you used to spend digging around trying to find that one particular spatula or whisk.

Now if I could only find a storage scheme for spices that would hold more than 15 varieties, my kitchen would really be set!

LMW