Basic Kitchen Organizing Part 9 – Stations

There is a big difference in cleaning and organizing.  So far the kitchen series has been mostly about really cleaning.  Even with the refrigerator, the simple organizing was only to make cleaning it much easier.

If you have worked through the kitchen with the series to this point, doing each activity in order as it was written, everything in your kitchen has been cleaned except for the drawers and cabinets. When I take that extra week getting ready for Thanksgiving, this is the point when I stop.

If you have been washing the dishes and keeping the counter and table cleared each day, your kitchen should look pretty good at this point.  We even covered all of the big and small appliances. Everything should be pretty clean. That does not necessarily mean it is organized.

Today you are going to take some extra steps to start getting your kitchen to work for you.  You are going to sit down with a notebook and a pen and take a minute to think about how you work in the kitchen. You are going to develop a plan to get your kitchen to help you do those activities.  Being organized is setting up your spaces to work effectively so you can work smart instead of just working hard.

We covered the junk drawer in an earlier article.  We covered the pantry and those containers for your leftovers earlier in this series. Before we get into any more individual cabinets and drawers, you are going to sit down and make a plan that will help you figure out what things should really be in each one. We will take a few days to work it out, but when you have your plan in hand, and start opening those doors it will be much easier figuring out what needs to stay, what needs to be moved and what needs to go altogether.

Today you do not need to spend any elbow grease, just exercise your brain.  Today is the first step in the planning process. Just grab a chair and sit it in the doorway of your kitchen. Take that pen and paper and map out how you want to work in your kitchen. Start by drawing a big box in the general shape of your kitchen.

Take a minute to think about the movie Ratatouille, the TV show Hell’s Kitchen, the assembly line at church suppers or the local soup kitchen. In each of those kitchens there is a particular station to do every task.  Setting up specific stations for different tasks that you do with all of the right tools close at hand will help you a lot.

The Famous Kitchen Triangle.

Some things you will not be able to move without getting into a big remodeling project.  Your stove, sink and refrigerator are set in place. These are the points of the famous kitchen triangle.  Draw a small circle on your map for each of these points and label them. Make lines connecting them. Now put your pencil down and think about the rest of this before trying to figure it all out on paper.

The reason this triangle is so connected to kitchen planning is because the biggest purpose of the kitchen existing is to prepare meals. The triangle represents an assembly line for the simplest activities involved in that process. In an ideal world the triangle would have equal sides and all kinds of counter and cupboard space in between.

Now see that line that goes between your refrigerator and your sink, ideally, your pantry would be somewhere along that line. You could pull all of the food out of the fridge, then out of the pantry. You would set all of the food down on the counter and use the sink to wash everything up before cooking a meal.

See that line between your sink and stove, ideally your cutting boards and pots and pans would be somewhere along that line.  You would take all of the washed veggies cut them up, dump them into a pot and put them on the stove.

See the line going from the stove back to the refrigerator, ideally your food serving and storage containers would go along that line. You would take all of the food and put them on serving platters and plates to serve, then put the leftovers in containers and back into the refrigerator.

A large portion of the remaining activities that occur in the kitchen ideally hover around and between those three points.

Most of us do not live in the ideal world we live in the real world.  So we work with what we have. We do not all work the same. So following the triangle may not work for everyone.  But understanding the purpose and thought of the theoretical triangle, is a good place to start when figuring out your own plan.

Designating Work Stations.

Keeping all of the ideal thoughts in mind, you are ready to pick points that can be designated as work stations for all of the different activities you typically perform in the kitchen. Again, do not start dotting up your map just yet.

In the kitchen usually more than in any other room, you are a moving target. There are so many things that go on in there.  There are many nooks and crannies that can be optimized to help you as you swirl around the room. But at the same time, while you may be able to add some shelving, try some neat tricks or some specialty storage solutions, you are fairly restricted to the cabinet and counter space you have available. So your kitchen has a bulls eye to it that does not move.  The closer you get to that bulls eye, the more action you will find. That bullseye is not necessarily in the center of the kitchen.  It is probably in the center of the triangle mentioned above if you cook a lot.

You know what activities you do in your kitchen.  Think about your typical day starting with first thing in the morning. Think about different meals and snack times. Do you home school in your kitchen? Is your desk in your kitchen? Then think about the things you do occasionally like parties and holidays.

For big meals you have the triangle as a guide.  You need a place to keep food, a prep station, etc. Make a separate list for these bigger activities. You can use the back of your map or another piece of paper. Do not worry about the stuff yet, just focus on the activities.

For other frequent activities besides big meals it may be smarter to separate foods and tools and pick cabinets and counters a little further from the rest of the action.

For example, first thing in the morning when we both worked out of the house, breakfast was a quick dash. I have a coffee/cocoa station and a small cabinet designated for cereals, oatmeal, cream of wheat and grits, etc. that are pretty close to each other.  I also invested in some cheap plastic bowls (great for the kids, but hubby and I tend to be more fumbly in the morning, too) that stay in the fast breakfast cabinet. I was able to have them near the microwave and toaster in one home, but not so much in others. We started skipping breakfast less and began occasionally opting for the more hardy options that were able to be nuked in a few short minutes.

As I mentioned when writing about the pantry, I also have a cabinet specifically for snacks.  Pulling those things out has kept the pantry so much neater. And you know how kids will go comatose as they stand in front of the fridge with the door wide open just waiting for something to jump out to them?  Not so much around here anymore! Everyone goes straight for the snack cabinet. It may be a small saving in energy, but we’ll take it!

We also do big family gatherings a few times a year.  We have a lot of dishware, servers, platters and even some food stuffs that I use for those gatherings that I seldom use any other time. Even though some of the dishes go with my everyday set, I freed up my everyday cabinet by putting them with the other stuff in a weird but great bonus closet just outside of the kitchen. In the past I kept them packed in a giant storage container on a shelf in my garage. It may not be in the kitchen, but it still counts as a kitchen station.

There are any number of stations that you could have, but they work best when they are things that do not often need to be borrowed from when doing other activities.  I do not have a baking center because I tend to use the typical baking dry goods and paraphernalia for regular dinners often. Those things are blended among other things closer to the heart of the kitchen.  Some other things are seldom used and in the gatherings closet.

Give all of your activities a thought and list some additional stations that might work well for you. Decide if it would work best to be near the bullseye of the kitchen or out of the main action.

It is really important to think about the activities that YOU actually do.  Do not imagine your mother, your grandmother, that amazing cooking friend, or your favorite food celebrity.  Do not imagine that huge dinner party when you seldom have any guests over. As life goes on, your culinary interests and needs will change.  You will have different kitchens along the way.  Set your current kitchen up for the way you currently use it and need it.

Using a pencil, roughly circle where each station could go on your map. Do not try to figure where everything should go, we will work on that next. just pencil in the approximate placement of the activity stations.