5 Simple Ways To Organize Your Kitchen

We all know the heart of the home is the kitchen — besides the bed we probably spend more time here than any other space. It’s not just a place to cook, it’s also a place to gather and entertain, enjoy meals together, and create lasting memories. Having an efficient kitchen can make our lives flow more smoothly and greatly reduce daily stress.  Below are five simple changes you can make to your kitchen today to get more organized.

 Declutter

You can always do this one drawer or cabinet at a time to avoid getting overwhelmed or tearing your kitchen apart. Grab a trash bag and set a timer for 10 minutes to get rid of as many unused items as you can. No. 1 on our list?  The stupid plastic cups that you take home from restaurants. Other items to toss:

1. Stinky or broken water bottles

2. Tupperware with no lids

3. Pans with scratched non stick coating

4. Restaurant chopsticks

5. Mismatched coffee cups

Water Bottle Storage

One of our biggest pet peeves is storing water bottles.  In a cabinet they always fall creating a domino like chain reaction.  In a drawer they fall and inevitably get stuck to the point the drawer won’t open or close.  To avoid all these headaches we like to use an acrylic wine rack to store them horizontally. Amazon has one of our favorites and it can be used in a drawer or cabinet!  Gone are the days of tumbling water bottles rolling away from you.

Invest In Lazy Susans

Using a turntable is an easy way to always b items in the back to be easily moved to the front.  They come in many different sizes and varieties. Here a few places we like to use them and the type of lazy susan we use in each space:

1. Oils and vinegars in the cabinets

2. For condiments in the fridge 

3. Under the sink for cleaning products

4. Deep corner cabinets

Organize your spices

When organizing a kitchen, spices  are one of the biggest areas of waste we see.  Rarely is there a time that we don’t throw away about 50% of the spices because of expiration dates.  Take some time and go through your spices and throw away anything that’s expired — you’ll be surprised at how many have expired — and then arrange them so nothing gets lost in the back.  Extra tip — buy spices in the same brand when possible, because the containers are similar and look more uniform. Don’t bother with decanting into fancy matching spice jars, it’s time consuming, messy, and spices expire fast.  Here are three items we use to help organize spices more efficiently:

1. Two-tiered Lazy Susan

2. Spice riser

3. Spice drawer liner — if you like them stored in the drawer.

File your pans, bakeware and platters. 

This is one of our favorite ways to make a kitchen function better.  It never fails that when you’re in the middle of cooking something the pan you need is the one on the bottom of the pile. “Filing” flat items allows you to see everything at a glance and eliminates the need move items to get to whatever is on the bottom.  The Container Store’s You Copia Adjustable Cookware Rack is one of our go-tos when it comes to filing pans. The store’s 4-Sort Wire Divider is another great option to consider.

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Top 10 Items to Purchase At The Container Store

We’ve said it a million times — and will continue to say how excited we are to finally have a Container Store in our area! ( For those of you who haven’t heard us shouting it from the rooftops — the new Germantown store opens Saturday, September 14.) We cannot wait to have shelves and shelves teeming with our favorite items within just a short driving distance. Until now, we would either have to order products for our projects online and wait for them to arrive, or, make a road trip to another city to pick them up, which would take up a lot of time. So, having a store right down the road is a godsend. In honor of the store’s opening we’ve curated a list of our favorite Container Store products that we swear by, and find ourselves constantly using during organizing projects.

Here are our Top 10 Items to Purchase At The Container Store:

You’d be hard-pressed to find a woman that doesn’t have at least a small collection of jewelry that she’s acquired over the years. We’ve found that the Container Stores jewelry stackers are the perfect solution for organizing even the smallest of items. They come in a variety of sizes and styles from expandable storage trays to compact jewelry boxes, and will suit just about anyone’s collection of bits and baubles.

Here are four of our favorite jewelry stackers:

1. Stackers Medium Expandable Jewelry Storage Tray

2. Large Expandable Jewelry Stacker

3. Stackers Jewelry Storage Kit

4. White Supersize Stackers Premium Jewelry Box

We’ve found ourselves relying on these white plastic storage bins A LOT lately. They are extremely versatile and work in just about any room. We’ve used them for everything from pantry and under sink storage to keeping items contained in laundry and craft rooms. Not only do the handles make them easy to transport from one place to another, the bins are also lightweight and sturdy.

The store’s Yamazaki Black Tosca Basket with Wooden Handles have become one of our favorite ways to organize a pantry in a stylish way. Brooke even recently bought them for her own pantry, because she loved them so much. Why we love them: along with being stylish, they’re sturdy, allow you to easily see what’s in the basket (which is great for kiddos reaching for snacks), and they have felt on the bottom, so they won’t scratch any surfaces. The baskets come in different sizes and also white.

A YouCopia White StoreMore Adjustable Cookware Rack will make a world of difference when it comes to storing your pots, pans, and all their lids. What makes this product even better is the fact that it’s customizable to fit just about any space, so you don’t have to worry about it not fitting in your kitchen’s cabinets.

While we use these multi-purpose bins (pictured above) a lot in kitchen pantries, we really love using them in craft rooms. They’re ideal for storing all sorts of crafty items, and since they’re see through you can see what’s in them without having to guess. You can also use the tall, slim bin to file away paperwork in your office or other paper items like magazines or notebooks. These also come in several different sizes and can fit in many different spaces around the home.

We’re all about labeling everything that we can, so we’d been on the hunt for labels that would really hold up for awhile — and we found exactly what we were looking for with The Container Store’s bin clips. They’re sturdy, stay put, and look great — what more could you ask for? They also come in white.

Tip: We suggest using a chalk marker or sharpie paint pen to label the clips to avoid any smudging. We’ve also used Cricut vinyl labels!

We get a lot of questions about ways to organize makeup and beauty products — and while there are several different items we use — depending on the project — one of our favorite ways to store makeup is by using the Luxe acrylic 7-section divided palette insert. It fits well in most deep drawers and allows each product to sit up and displays them well. We’ve found that if you don’t see an item, you typically forget to use it — and this palette insert fixes that problem completely.

Another product we love for makeup and beauty storage is the InterDesign Clarity Cosmetics & Vanity Organizer. It takes advantage of vertical space, giving you more free space on your vanity or powder room counter. It can also hold several different items like lipsticks, brushes, tweezers, etc.

Along with the questions about makeup and beauty storage, we also get a lot of questions about organizing photos. We know just how important these snapshots can be and the memories they hold, so we think it’s important to have an organizing product that not only stores your mementos, but also protects them. And, the Iris Photo & Craft Storage Carrier does just that. They come in multiple sizes, including carriers specifically designed for 4” X 6” and 5” X 7” photos.

Garages can be a tricky area to keep organized — mainly because of the amount of items we tend to toss in when we don’t know where else to put them. Add in sports gear, tools, and gardening supplies, and you’ve got a lot of stuff to store in one space — so, it’s important to take advantage of all the vertical space you can with the Elfa Utility Track. You can install the track to the garage wall and customize it specifically for your needs using the different Elfa add-ons that range from tool holders and bike racks to utility boxes and shelving.

Tip: If you want to avoid the crowds that will no doubt be at the grand opening Saturday you can purchase items online using Click & Pickup and schedule a time to pick up your items and have them delivered directly to your car — for FREE!

To see more of our favorite organizing products visit our SHOP page.

In addition to our excitement for the new Container Store, we’re also extremely excited to announce that we are officially part of the company’s Contained Home program. As Contained Home Organizers we will provide a wide variety of in-home services that range from designing comprehensive organization plans that are perfectly suited for your home’s needs to coming up with ways to repurpose a space after a student has left for college. As an added perk, we will also schedule the delivery and installation of your new organizing system, once a plan is in place. Click here, to find out more about Contained Home and the services we provide.

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4 Tips To Help Organize Your Classroom

If you’re a teacher, then you know just how much effort goes into planning and prepping your classroom for the beginning of the school year. And, while there’s a lot of excitement and anticipation surrounding the first day, there are a lot of moving parts — which includes everything from a thousand different school supplies to a room full of energetic children — that need to align for everything to go smoothly in the classroom for the entire year. 

Keeping all those moving parts in order requires a person to be very organized — so it’s extremely important that ALL the organizing systems a teacher uses are as efficient as possible. BPH organizer, Turner, taught kindergarten for years and put together a few organizing tips to help any classroom run more smoothly this school year:

STORAGE! STORAGE! STORAGE! 

Arm yourself with as many storage options as possible. The more storage the better! Invest in getting a variety of bins, boxes, and canisters that vary in shape and size. You can use them for anything from keeping books and similar supplies together to keeping your room decor sorted by holiday or theme.

You’ll also want to make sure you label absolutely everything! For kindergarteners, I labeled everything in the classroom with a word as well as a picture — which really helped the kids as they developed their literacy skills. 

Make Sure Everything In The Classroom Has A Home  

Designate a specific “home” for items in the classroom BEFORE school starts. Then take the time to show students where everything goes, so they don’t have to guess. In my classroom we’d spend the first few weeks of school learning how to use everything in the classroom. We’d even role play scenarios at each learning center, so that the kids could see exactly what to do with an item and where it needed to go when they were done using it. This made life a lot easier during the year and the kids always knew how to clean up their learning centers and keep them organized. 

Have A Special File For Each Student

From homework and report cards to weekly reading quizzes and art work, there’s a ton of paperwork to keep track of when you’re a teacher. However, there are some papers that are more important than others, like student profiles that can include anything from emergency contact information to any known allergies. Over the years I learned that it was critical to create an individual file folder for each and every student to keep those significant papers all in one place that was easily accessible. 

On the front of each folder I would put a copy of the student's important personal information, and then inside the folder I would store any communication that I had had with the child’s parents throughout the school year. That way, whenever a parent had an issue, or, a question about something, I could quickly find any documentation I had on the subject. 

Substitute Teacher Information 

Waking up sick as a teacher can often be a nightmare, because not only do you feel terrible, but you have to find a substitute, and manage to get some sort of lesson plan to them. To remedy some of this stress, I kept a substitute teacher binder on my desk with detailed classroom management instructions, class lists, important numbers, and also some work they could do with the kids if the sub showed up and my daily plans weren’t readily available. 

I also kept a five-tier shelving system that held each day's plans, plus the materials needed in each one. I would always get this sorted out and ready on Friday the week before, so there would never be much stress the next week. This system also made it easy for any substitute to find my plans.