As a military spouse, I have lived in all kinds of houses, both big and small. However, our house at Fort Hood has the smallest kitchen we’ve ever dealt with.
One of the goals on our Deployment Bucket List was to organize the kitchen and I finally took the time (and money) to get it done!
The entire kitchen is 250 square feet (12 feet long by 6 feet wide). **get real measurements**
There’s no pantry, 6 upper cabinets, 6 lower cabinets, and only 2 drawers. The counter space is limited, so I really want to keep them as clear as possible. And that means maximizing cabinet space to get everything to fit.
I became slightly obsessed with Netflix’s show ‘Get Organized with the Home Edit’ when it came out in 2020. So, I used their process and {some} of their products to organize this small kitchen.
(Wal-Mart now carries a line of storage bins from the Home Edit and it’s slightly embarrassing how excited I am about it.)
Here are the before and after pictures!
The Home Edit: Conquering the clutter with style
The Home Edit Life: The No-Guilt Guide to Owning What You Want and Organizing EverythingThe Home Edit Workbook: Prompts, Activities, and Gold Stars to Help You Contain the Chaos
The Upper Cabinets
I bought a spice rack, but there was no good way to access the spices on the highest shelf without knocking over the spices in front of it. So, I ditched that plan and decided to put our spices on turntables instead.
And it worked out sooo good! Pretty much everything is visible and much easier to get to.
I switched the baking stuff over to a different cabinet and moved the oils and sauces to this one. I was even able to move the trays from the top of the cabinets to the top shelf because we have more room!
After moving the sauces, oils, and condiments to the cabinets with the spices, this cabinet became home to all of our baking supplies. (Plus the peanut butter, because I couldn’t figure out where it fit in.)
This cabinet has all of our boxed goods. And it was the easiest cabinet to organize.
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This cabinet has our canned goods and before we would put our bread and bags of chips on the top shelf. I bought that can organizer when we moved to North Carolina and it works really well for us, so I decided to leave it alone. But I did move our dried goods containers and boxed pastas to the top shelf of this cabinet.
I’m not sure what everyone else keeps in the cabinet over the stove, but us having tumblers and water bottles up there was NOT working out. The kids were constantly climbing on the counter to get them and then knocking them over to reach the ones in the back.
So, we put the zip-loc bags and the plastic wrap up here instead. So far it works out much better since I’m the only one who uses this stuff anyway.
When we unpacked, this cabinet kinda became a catch-all for the things that were left without a home. Now, it’s the kids’ plastic dishes, the tumblers/water bottles, and the dish towels. It’s so much better having the kids’ stuff where they can reach it!
The dishes didn’t really change too much. I just straightened them up a little.
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The Bottom Cabinets
The cabinet with the pots and pans didn’t really change that much either. I moved a few things around and put the pots that I use the most closer to the front.
The cabinet under the sink was the one I dreaded the most! Since there’s no cabinet space for our small appliances, I put the ones that I use the most (the electric grill, crockpot, hand mixer, and griddle) under here. Plus, cleaning supplies, sponges/brushes, plastic grocery bags, and the drying mat for the dishes. It was a mess!
Using more over-the-door baskets helped get a lot of the little things out of the bottom of the cabinet. And I moved a few of the appliance accessories to a basket on top of the cabinets to make some more room under here.
Corner Cabinets with Lazy Susans
I have a love/hate relationship with these corner cabinets with lazy susans in them. Adding containers to store the cereal, chips, and crackers made things a lot neater and easier to access.
But the bread savers are a GAME CHANGER! Being able to store the bread upright instead of having to lay it down saves so much space!
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This corner cabinet holds our tupperware and extra pitcher. Before I organized, it also had random snacks that wouldn’t fit in the other cabinet. But now it has our trash bags and dishwashing packs instead of that stuff being mixed with our snacks (which was a terrible idea in the first place).
Drawers
Since there are only 2 drawers in the entire kitchen, I tried to maximize the space as much as possible. The expandable silverware tray helped a lot. And I put our knives back behind it to hopefully keep the kids from grabbing them.
This drawer has to hold literally everything else that isn’t silverware or a knife, so it’s pretty full. But adding 2 small drawer organizers to hold the small items helped.
This small kitchen has been a challenge, but these ‘edits’ have made it much more functional.
Bouncing from rental house to rental house in the military has honed my problem-solving skills in so many ways. And dealing with small spaces is one of them!
