Systemize Your Home

Archive for February, 2010

The first step in organizing your refrigerator and freezer is to clear it out and clean the appliance completely. Take away all of the shelves and clean them thoroughly. It will be easy when you start with the top shelf. Decide what you will need, and then discard old scraps and anything you feel that you’ll never use anymore. Open all containers and confirm what’s inside. Check the expiry dates on all items. Throw away anything that’s out of date or uncertain.

Next, list the items that fit in in your refrigerator and choose the possible ways to organize them. Take full benefit of the drawers, shelves and refrigerator door. Keep the items of same category such as drinks, together. Store tiny items and snippets in transparent plastic containers so that you can see what’s inside. During this clearing and organization process, prepare a shopping inventory of items you need to purchase.

Items for the Refrigerator: Keep meats only in the refrigerator’s meat or deli drawer. This part of the refrigerator is usually colder than the rest of the areas. If you feel you won’t cook hamburger for the next three days, it is better you place it in the freezer. Store fish overnight in a filter that’s filled with ice and place it in a bowl. This will keep the fish fresh and hence no degrading in the quality of fish. Don’t place eggs in the refrigerator door. Whenever the door is opened, the eggs will be exposed to atmosphere.

Instead, keep them in the packet on a higher shelf in the refrigerator. Crisper drawers are the best options for vegetable, such as peppers. These drawers naturally have moisture control designed to help check vegetables from losing moisture. Keep lettuce fresher by storing it in an air tight bag. Remove the external leaves that have excess moisture. Wrap around the lettuce with a paper towel, insert it in a plastic bag, squeeze the bag as much as possible so as to remove air out and seal the bag.

Within your kitchen you may have dozens or even hundreds of small kitchen tools, utensils and other items. But they should be perfectly organized and separated to ease your cooking process. With that, you may also have plenty of nonperishable food items, pots and pans, dishware, cook books, glasses, small and medium sized appliances and cleaning products.

When you start the process of organizing your kitchen cabinets and drawers, empty everything out and store them if you feel they will be useful in the future. Get rid of old as well as broken items as you no longer need them. Next put together all similar items and find out the storage space required for each set of items. Determine the frequently used items in each group.

Place the items that will be used often, like your everyday silverware, in a drawer that’s easy to access and suitably located. Less frequently used items should be placed next to the most frequently used items and hence they aren’t readily accessible. Always segregate your kitchen items by categories. After your kitchen items are separated into categories, determine the space needed to store each group, drawer space and some other type of storage.

You have to decide whether all these items are to be stored in the kitchen itself or in some other places like the dining area. Calculate all of your available room in cabinet and make sure that all the items fit inside it. But you need to plan so as to accommodate all these items that include your bread machine, blender, slow cooker, pasta machine, toaster, and waffle iron within your cabinets.

To make a noticeable difference in your kitchen you can employ complete redesign project from scratch if it comes within your budget or you can simply give a face lift to the existing kitchen. The latter can be accomplished by installing new appliances, creating cluster-free countertops, refacing the cabinets etc. There are lots of parameters that need to be considered when choosing your countertops. The first and foremost constraint is the space available with you to install them and you should decide where the counters should be located and what must be stored on the countertops.

irst of all take a look at the things that are currently stored on the countertops. When your redesign project progresses, you should take a big decision in relocating the things that are already stored on the counters. The next big thing is to find small or medium sized appliances so that they perfectly fit in the available space and enrich the beauty. You may think of preparing a quick meal with buying an indoor grill. For better utilization of counter space, make use of appliances that can be installed under your cabinets.

You can also install a telephone on a nearby wall with an extra-long handset cord, so that it allows you to traverse the whole kitchen while speaking. There are paper towel racks that can be hung on the wall or on the side of your refrigerator so that it doesn’t take up countertop space. Don’t allow items to pile up especially dirty dishes, utensils, and cooking tools to utilize your kitchen space optimally.