Kitchen Organization: Baking Supplies

There are few things I find more stressful than having a messy kitchen. When my kitchen, and to a certain degree my home, is feeling disorganized, I find it so challenging to relax. Every time I walk into the room, I can’t help but notice everything out of place and make a running list in my mind of what needs to be done to fix it. I’m guilty of constant mess-shaming my living space and I had finally had enough. The time had finally come for me to do something about it, starting with a kitchen organization overhaul.

I started my kitchen organizing with my cabinet that contains all of my baking supplies. Sure it has some of our shared kitchen items on it like our fancy new knives (thanks wedding registry) and our fruit and veggie bowl (an amazing off-registry wedding gift from my MOH) but it’s mostly a collection of nuts, chocolates, Tupperware and kitchen flavors.

When we moved in last summer, it didn’t take long for me to realize that our apartment was lacking in the storage department. I did was any 20-something would do and I turned to IKEA to solve my problems. Enter the high cabinet with doors. I thought all of my storage problems were solved. Not quite.

My biggest challenge with my cabinet organization was in fact three: tupperware, baking dishes, random small baking accessories and small bags of just about everything. Here’s how I tackled them! Keep in mind this is less of a tutorial and more of me journaling my process.

Tupperware

I think you’ll be hard pressed to find something that thinks organizing tupperware is an easy job. Because the collection we’ve built over the past few years is from an array of brands and in a variety of materials, nothing quite stacks together efficiently. Plus, I’ve found that when given the space, my tupperware will spread as far and wide as it can. To prevent this and hopefully keep it contained, I invested in a large plastic container (but not so large that it didn’t fit in my cabinet).

The upside of this is that the Tupperware stays in the container (minus just a littleeeee over flow) and thus stays contained. If I can’t find a lid, I know to just dig around a little bit more rather than assume that the lid has wandered off and is in a pile of cookie cutters.

Baking Dishes

While in the past my baking dishes were kept in a haphazard pile, I separated them by shape to maximize their organization. Once I was piling the round dishes on top of each other, I realized they actually fit quite nicely. Similarly, I was able to stack the square and rectangle dishes once the round ones were out of the equation. It sounds so simple now but for 9 months these dishes were constantly at risk of falling out of my cabinet every time the doors opened.

Spring tension rods were suggested to me as another possible solution, but my cabinet was too flimsy to actually make these useful. The shelves weren’t holding in place and everyt ime something shifted, they would come undone. Even so, I love the idea of these and am holding onto them until I find another way to put them to use!

Small Bags of Everything

I’m not exaggerating when I say EVERYTHING. As I cleaned out my cabinet I stumbled upon mostly empty bags of nuts that I decided to keep for my next project and then tossed into a giant pile and lost track of. Similarly, I found small bags of pumpkin M&Ms (I don’t even want to think about how old those are), boxes and bags of teas and hot chocolate as well as different kinds of chocolate chips and specialty flours. Because it was all ending up in a giant pile that spread over two shelves, I was constantly adding to the pile but never going back and finding anything in it.

My solution? A combination of slightly more organized piles and glass jars. Any sort of clear jars could have worked for this project but I went with these from Amazon. I also have a large collection of mason jars and other glass vessels so I made sure to put those to use as well.

When it came to my candy, I found a plastic bin and stuffed all of the half eaten bags of candy in it. In case you haven’t noticed, the theme of my reorg is “organized piles”. I used a similar bin for my baking essentials (baking powder, baking soda, cornstarch, vanilla extract).

Random Baking Accessories

This one feels like a bit of a catchall but since “random” is literally the best way to describe most of the things in my baking cabinet, this feels like the most honest way to title this subsection.

If you had asked me two months ago how many cookie cutters I owned, I would have likely guessed 2 or 4. I turns out I own way more than that as I was able to fill an entire 14 x 11 x 6.25 plastic bin. In the end, I found myself with one bin for cookie cutters, one for accessories and one for decorations.

Again, I find myself making piles as a solution for all of my organizational problems but since I’m keeping said piles contained in plastic bins, I’m hopeful that they’ll keep me on track for at least a few months.

I’m two weeks into the new system and it is working out well so far! Have you tackled some kitchen organization challenges? Let me know how you handled your kitchen!