How to Organize Your Kitchen in ONE DAY (and fix this c… — Transcript

The most important way that you can organize your kitchen costs you nothing, and all you need are some Post-it notes. I'm here in Christa's kitchen. If you remember, we organized Christa's very messy bedroom and gave her the dream closet makeover. While we were here, we noticed that she was renovating her kitchen. The first time we came, it was definitely the old, dated kitchen. When we came back, it was fabulous. I absolutely love it, and I asked her if I could snoop around. What I saw was the number one organizing mistake that I see in most kitchens, which is improper zoning. I asked her if we could come back. She's actually on vacation, and we could just use her kitchen so I can show you how to zone your kitchen properly. All you need is a stack of Post-its and a pen. When you're looking at your kitchen and trying to decide where the things you use every single day will go, remember the valuable real estate rule. Anything from waist to eye level is your valuable real estate, which means you have to put the things you use every day from your waist to eye level. So, top drawers and the lowest bottom shelf of your upper cabinets can only have things you use multiple times every single day. While I was snooping, I was like, spices above the sink? That's different. How often do you cook with spices? Christa and her husband said every single day. So, you're at the stove, you're doing your thing, quick, I need paprika, and you're running over the sink. Totally doesn't make sense. I'm making fun of her, but the truth is a lot of people do this. Again, you're here, you want to flip, where's your spatula? Nope, this is bread over here. Would make sense? Nope, that's oven mitts. You have to run across the kitchen to find what you need. Plates, right? Should be right above the dishwasher. Nope. Ha, so funny. Here's the thing: true organization is about being super lazy. Super lazy. You have to identify the thing you use the most and then put it so you walk the least amount of steps. If you're emptying the dishwasher, your dishes should be right beside the dishwasher or like one step away. That's what we're going to do today. We're going to start with Post-its and think about the things that you use the most often: your spatula, your dishes, your glasses. We're going to write those on the Post-its and then put them in the place that makes the most sense. Right off the bat, the first thing you use the most often are plates and glasses. So, right above the dishwasher makes sense. Again, she has like fancy wine glasses, things like that. No, that can be somewhere else. You don't have to keep all your glasses together. I'm going to write glasses on here. I also think we could lower a shelf and put her everyday dishes like plates in here as well, so this can be double duty. We're going to go glasses and dishes. Here's the thing: it's not going to be perfect. Nobody's kitchen is set up perfectly. There's not a drawer for cutlery right here, which is unfortunate, but that's the thing. Everybody's kitchen will be different, and nobody's will be set up exactly right. But if you have in your mind that laziness is the number one priority, that will help you. You start by just identifying where things should go. The next thing you use the most often are spatulas, you use like spoons for stirring, a potato masher. We're going to call those utensils, even though they're not like cutlery. Again, right beside the stove. Right now, there's bread, which honestly below the toaster kind of makes sense, but you use bread less often than you use utensils. So, this is where the utensils are going to go. Let me see. Yep, we can move those fancy dishes. Fine, fine. The next thing you use the most often, I feel like, is spices. She definitely says she cooks with spices every meal. So, spices need valuable real estate, and right beside the stove, this is the perfect cabinet. When I was talking to Christa, she had mentioned she loves using mixing bowls quite often. This is where we're getting to the not perfect, but it's Post-its, so we can move things around. I do think bakeware mixing bowls could be located here, but also I would keep pots and pans right beside the stove, especially if you quickly need a pot lid because something's overflowing or something. She has them currently in her island. I want to try to see if we can get pots and pans in these deep cabinets here. Again, because we can move things around with the Post-its, it's not like you have to have it perfect this first time. What if we move mixing bowls over here and we do pots and pans because she has a lot of them right beside the stove in where I would probably keep pots and pans? She has a lot of plastic wrap and baggies, but if I was packing up leftovers, I wouldn't be standing here. If I was making lunch, I wouldn't be standing here because there's not enough counter space. This was my kitchen. I would stand here at the big island so I could spread things out and I can make sandwiches. I do think creating kind of a Tupperware food storage section in here makes way more sense. So, we're going to go baggies and we're going to go food storage in the island. Where's her strainer for pasta? Pasta strainer, where are you? All hands on deck, let's find the strainer. No, over the top of the fridge? No. Is this her strainer? Stop it, stop it. This is used at least once a week. Why the heck is it stored in the moon at the ceiling? That's a hard no, friends. This is so important to do: think about the things you use all the time and then go around and give it a home. I'm going to continue snooping, writing Post-its, and then we're going to shift and readjust. Everything's planned with Post-its. Now comes step two. This step sucks and it can feel overwhelming. There are two options here. Basically, we're stuff shuffling all the kitchen into the new zoned areas. This can feel very overwhelming because you're basically trashing your whole kitchen. The first option is one cabinet at a time. You're taking everything out of one cabinet and then moving the new stuff in. Then you can take the stuff that was in that cabinet and move it to the empty space. That's option one. The other option is we go cabinet by cabinet. We're moving this into here. Whatever was in that space, we're moving to the next location, and then moving that stuff to the next location, and so on and so forth. Friends, it's going to take a while, so definitely triage your time. How much time do you have to dedicate? Are you going to do one cabinet at a time and just do a swap, or are you going to go cabinet by cabinet, drawer by drawer, and tackle the entire kitchen? Today, we are obviously doing the entire kitchen. One cabinet down, 50 million to go, but everyday glasses and dishes are there. Now we're going to do the stuff shuffle of the spices. It's looking fab, definitely zoned it for the one she uses the most often, easiest to reach, and all the oils. Now we're moving on to utensils. Your spatula, your potato masher, this is where they should go. I'm taking this out and I'm going to put the best of the best in here. Truth time: she has way too many. I already saw. You don't need 50 million spatulas. What I'm going to do is shop her stuff, and when it's full, it's full. The drawer is the bad guy. I feel like this is good. We're not over-jamming this drawer. It's all the utensils she uses the most often. All the overflow and lesser used ones are going to go in here. Another quick tip when organizing is using Dana K. White's container concept. What that is saying is your whole house is a container, your drawer is a container, and you can only keep what fits. When we're zoning this for extra utensils, if it doesn't fit, we can't keep it. Let every drawer and every cabinet be the bad guy, and that will help you know what to keep and what to let go of. I think I'm going to try to get the pots and pans beside the stove. It just makes sense if you need to quickly grab a lid or another pot.

closet makeover and while we were here we noticed that she was renovating her kitchen the first time we came it was definitely the old dated kitchen and when we came back it was fabulous I absolutely love it and I asked her if I

could Snoop around and what I saw was the number one organizing mistake that I see in most kitchens which is improper zoning so I asked her if we could come back she's actually on vacation and we could just use her for her kitchen so I

can show you how to Zone your kitchen properly and all you need is a stack of posits and a pen when you're looking at your kitchen and trying to decide where are the things you use every single day

will go remember the valuable real estate rule anything from waste to eye level is your valuable real estate which means you have to put the things you use every day from your waist to eye level so top drawers and the lowest bottom

shelf of your upper cabinets that can only have things you use multiple times every single day so while I was snooping I was like spices above the sink that's different how often do you cook with spices and Christa and her husband said

every single day so you're at the stove you're doing your thing quick I need paprika and you're running over the sink totally doesn't make sense and I'm making fun of her but the truth is a lot of people do this again you're here you

want to flip where's your spatula nope this is bread over here would make sense nope that's oven mitts you have to run across the kitchen to find what you need plates right should be right above the dishwasher nope ha so funny here's the

thing true organization is about being super lazy super lazy you have to identify the thing you use the most and then put it so you walk the least amount of steps so if you're emptying the dishwasher your dishes should be right

beside the dishwasher or like one step away so that's what we're going to do today we're going to start with potit and think about the things that you use the most often your spatula your dishes your glasses and we're going to write

those on the poits and then put them in the place that makes the most sense right off the bat the first thing you use the most often are plates and glasses so right above the dishwasher makes sense and again she has like fancy

wine glasses things like that no that can be somewhere else you don't have to keep all your glasses together so I'm going to write glasses on here I also think we could lower a shelf and put her everyday dishes like plates in here as

well so this can be double duty so we're going to go glass es and dishes here's the thing it's not going to be perfect nobody's kitchen is set up perfectly there's not a drawer for cutlery right here which is unfortunate but that's the

thing everybody's kitchen will be different and nobody's will be set up exactly right but if you have in your mind laziness is the number one priority that will help you and you start by just identifying where things should go the

next thing you use the most often are spatulas you use like spoons for stirring a potato masher so we're going to call those utensils even though they're not like Cutlery and again right beside the stove right now there's bread which honestly

below the toaster kind of makes sense but you use bread less often that you than you use utensils so this is where the utensils are going to go let me see yep we can move those fancy dishes fine fine the next

thing you use the most often I I feel like is spices right she definitely says she cooks with spices every me meal so spices need a valuable real estate and right beside the stove this is the perfect cabinet when I was talking to

Christa she had mentioned she loves using like mixing bowls quite often so this is where we're getting to the not perfect but it's posted so we can move things around I do think bake wear mixing bowls could be located here but

also I would keep pots and pans right beside the stove especially if if you quickly need a pot lid because something's overflowing or something but she has them currently in her Island I want to try to see if we can

get pots and pans in these deep cabinets here again because we can move things around with the posits it's not like you have to have it perfect this first time so what if we move mixing bowls over here and we do pots and pans cuz she has

a lot of them right beside the stove in where I would probably keep C pots and pans she has a lot of of like plastic wrap and baggies but if I was packing up leftovers I wouldn't be standing here if

I was making lunch I wouldn't be standing here because there's not enough counter space this was my kitchen I would stand here at the big island so I could spread things out and I can make sandwiches so I do think creating kind

of a tupperware food storage section in here makes way more sense so we're going to go baggies and we're going to go food storage in the island where's her strainer for pasta pasta strainer where are you all hands on deck let's find the

strainer no over the top of the fridge no is this her strainer stop it stop it this is used at least once a week why the heck is it stored in the moon at the ceiling that's a hard no friends this is

so important to do that think about the things you use all the time and then go around and give it home I'm going to continue snooping writing Post-its and then we're going to shift and [Music] readjust everything's planned with poits

now comes step two this step sucks and it can feel overwhelming so there are two options here basically we're stuff shuffling all the kitchen Into the Now new zoned areas this can feel very overwhelming because you're basically trashing your whole kitchen so the first

option is one cabinet at a time so you're taking everything out of the one cabinet and then you're moving the new stuff in and then you can take the stuff that was in that cabinet and move it to

the empty space that's option one the other option is we go cabinet by cabinet so we're moving this into here now what ever was in that space were moving to the next location and then moving that stuff to the next location and so on and

so forth friends it's going to take a while so definitely triage your time how much time do you have to dedicate are you going to do one cabinet at a time and just do a swap or you going to go

cabinet by cabinet drawer by drawer and tackle the entire kitchen today we are obviously doing the entire kitchen [Music] one cabinet down 50 million to go but everyday glasses and dishes are there so now we're going to do the stuff Shuffle

of the [Music] spices is looking Fab definitely zoned it for the one she uses the most often easiest to reach and all the oils so now we're moving on to utensils so your spatula your potato Master this is

where they should go so I'm taking this out and I'm going to put the best of the best in here truth time she has way too many I already saw you don't need 50 million spatulas so what I'm going to do

is shop her stuff and when it's full it's full the drawer is the bad guy [Music] I feel like this is good we're not over jamming this drawer it's all the utensils she uses the most often so all

the Overflow and lesser used ones are going to go in [Music] here another quick tip when organizing is using Dana K whites the container concept what that is saying is your whole house is a container your drawer is a container and you can only keep

what fits so when we're zoning this for extra utensils if it doesn't fit we can't keep it let every drawer and every cabinet be the bad guy and that will help you know what to keep and what to

let go of I think I'm going to try to get the pots and pans beside the stove it just makes sense if you need to quickly grab a lid or another pot and pan I'd like them to be close by but I

don't know if there's room so we're definitely just going to give it a try this makes sense actually for cutlery but I'm going to give it a little swoosh and organization she's got like a bunch of repeats you do not need four garlic

presses so I'm going to take a few of the duplicates out this drawer I think would be perfect for the plastic baggies and sandwich wraps because this is where I would stand to make leftover so I'm going to do this area really quickly

food storage her big mixing bowls that she really wanted all of that in this area here [Music] this is the face of someone who may be regretting all of her life choices because trying to do an entire Kitchen

in just a few hours not smart it is 1:00 hopefully we can finish this by five fingers crossed if you are stressed at home and you have also trashed your kitchen it's it's okay say it with me it's just the messy middle it's all part

of the [Music] process all the food storage is zoned in a great home everything looks awesome I made sure that every bottom has a lid you got to do this too and if you come across like extra lids and extra bottoms

they go no questions asked you're not allowed to keep them once I'm done everything that they touch and use on a daily basis now comes the fun part I feel like this is step three and that is looking at your kitchen differently and

not just zoning the stuff you use every day but think about how can I create different places for different activities that I'm doing in the kitchen like baking can I have a baking station or a tea and coffee station can I have a

breakfast station thinking about your kitchen in this way is a really fun way to like reorganize it but most importantly make it really functional Krist and her husband have a coffee maker on their kitchen counter but now that they have this new bar here I

thought this was the perfect spot to zone for a little beverage station so I'm going to move the coffee maker here and this drawer will be for teas and coffees and things like I don't know the bottle opener things you would use for

like preparing fancy drinks a drink station and to make it happen is literally some bins from the dollar store so Dollar Store dividers and some zoning is all it [Music] takes this drawer is going to be like for Junk I guess and I played D Jango

with all the little drawer dividers we got from the dollar store should I have measured probably did I absolutely not but it worked out like a glove so now I'm just going to fill this with the stuff that they use every day so you

know batteries tape you get the idea and move it around till it [Music] works we even have space to make an entertaining drawer which is so fun so napkins and paper plates and all the like little Cutlery everything organized

in one drawer there's space on space on space now and that's the whole secret of zoning like once you start creating functional spaces it's amazing how much more room you start to have in your kitchen we are in the home stretch we're

quickly going to tackle this Pantry right now I'm looking and there's canned goods mixed in with sides mixed in with snacks this is key zoning no NOS we want every single shelf to be a distinct category [Music] oh no oh no is it rice Brown lentil

literally everywhere that [Music] sucks all the food is organized every Shelf has a different category and I actually found a lot of like breakfast stuff while we were doing this so we moved it all over with the toaster and

the toast and the bread so they have an entire cabinet dedicated just for breakfast which makes sense it's another Zone this has been fun but also we spilled rice and we spilled lentils so quick tip my friends make sure that you

are sealing your bags before you just put them back in your cabinet okay this is nice it's decorative but I'm actually going to relocate some of this because it doesn't make sense it's not super practical so we can have this

great little coffee station right here and as much as I love this I think it's going to leave and go in a different room everything is zoned and put away we can take these off Christa is on vacation so I'm not revealing to her so

guess what I get to reveal to you you I'm going to show you the before and after and show you how functional this kitchen really is I just noticed something before I reveal it to you Chris's she says she's a ladybug but

I feel like she has some butterfly Tendencies because on the side of her fridge are 50 million hideous magnets I can't I'm going to hide them on the other side of the fridge don't judge me let me know in the comments below if you

are a magnet on the fridge person or if it also makes your eye twitch like it does me okay let's hide it post it post it post it okay are you ready for the reveal if you remember before her everyday plates were

right here really far from the dishwasher now we have a breakfast cabinet which is perfect because it's right beside the toaster all of her bread which used to be in the drawer and cereals and spreads right where she

needs them where the bread used to be now has tea towels which totally makes sense they used to be like at the back underneath the sink hard to get to place of honor and the pots and pans are now

stored right beside the stove but the best thing is of course spatula and spoons I don't even remember what was in here before but let me tell you it was not what should have been there and oh was yes it was like the little things

and like the extra spoons and the the word is escaping me he going to get there Emily oven mitt the oven mitt and tans and like oh my gosh what's in here oh yeah spices that makes a whole heck of a lot more sense

than over the sink stop it Christa stop it this is so cool she's going to be so excited extra stuff up here let me see what else so the medication that was on the counter we actually have in this

cabinet along with the blender and her like smoothie stuff and the protein powder which was in the pantry is now here we have entertaining glasses and her like weird water bottles here and the most functional thing of all her

everyday glasses and plates right above the dishwasher and that is where yours should be too oh man this is so much better Cutlery was actually in a great spot but it was overcrowded and of course now we have moved all the aluminum foil stuff

like that into a place of honor instead of it being like crazy pants and oh the food storage look at it really look at it so organized she has way too much she's not here to declutter but I'm

loving it and the thing she wanted the most was her many many many many many mixing bowls which were shoved way across the kitchen now exactly where she can get them in a second what's in the bottom I oh making

pants I'm so clever and this bar that used to be basically nothing now has so much purpose junk drawer of course for all the junk but this beverage drawer is making my heart so happy look at this tea beautiful all the things she's using

for like beverages everything has a designated Zone we have a zone for par parties we have a zone for baking it's like organizing dream come true I'm so grateful to Christa for allowing us to come in her house while she's on

vacation and use her kitchen as an example to show you how to Zone this is hands down the biggest mistake that most people are making and yes it doesn't look very different on the outside but behind closed doors that's what really

matters this went from an unpractical kitchen to a super functional one and we were done by 4:00 so it doesn't take a lot of time and you don't have to spend a dime I did use some Dollar Store

containers but even without that just moving things around so it makes more sense is all you need to do to have a tidier and organized kitchen thank you guys so much for those of you who have stayed to the end you ask all the time

for me to go back and revisit places I organized in the past guess what Christ is not here want to Snoop and see if her bedroom's still tidy let's go okay you watch over the camera gear this room

it's still okay but look it she even still put the tray out everything looks I snooped you guys in every cabinet I snooped everywhere it has been a while since I did this room and look it it's staying organized that's the

power of real organization it's like it stops you from being on the cycle of cleaning and then getting messy again you do it once you do it right and it stays organized forever sorry Christa that I snooped but also it looks amazing