Behind closed doors – 5 cupboard organisation tips

‘You don’t know what goes on behind closed doors’

It's a saying you may be familiar with and it is especially true if you know your cupboards are in a bit of a state. Not knowing what is in your cupboards means:

• wasted time looking for things,
• wasted money buying what you already have,
• a bit of a downer for you looking at all that chaos...

Do you open your kitchen cupboards ready to play catch with whatever falls out?

Are they so full that you have to take everything out to find one item?

If yes, then your cupboards could do with being decluttered and organised and that’s my first tip

Always declutter before attempting to organise otherwise you are just moving stuff around.

My second tip is:

Take one cupboard at a time

You’d be surprised how much stuff can be stored in one cupboard! Put everything on a flat surface and work out what stays and what goes. Use by dates are important in the kitchen and with cosmetics and medication. Look out for items that you have two, three or four of! Phone charges for phones you no longer have can go and leads for electrical items no longer owned by you can go too. Lidless pens, broken items and socks that are no longer in a pair are obvious candidates for the bin.

Tip number three is:

Give the inside of the cupboard a clean and freshen up all ready for the things that you want to keep.

My fourth tip is:

Plan how to make best use of the space you have got

This is about understanding how you will use the cupboard and what for. This is when you can decide about storage because you have a good idea of what will go back in the cupboard. This about using the whole space and that means using the height as well as the width. These shelves are great for kitchen cupboards and worktops and these corner shelves are useful for awkward angles. Storage baskets with handles are useful if you want to find an item quickly without having to empty the whole cupboard trying to get to the back of it.

Finally, the saying ‘out of sight out of mind’ rings true with this final and fifth tip:

Put a label on it

When you have decluttered, cleaned and organised your cupboard you may not immediately commit to memory what is in there. If you share your home with others they definitely won’t know what you have decided to store in the cupboard so a label will help. If you are not comfortable with one on the outside of the door one on the inside of the door will do the job just as well, alternatively draw up a room plan and write a brief inventory of what is kept where. Labelling systems I have found useful are the computer generated labels, the handy labeller and of course a hand written sticky label does the job too.

Take one step closer to having organised cupboards and tackle one today! Good luck.