Organising Cabinets and Drawers Like an Expert

Organising cabinets works when you group things by how often you use them, put the daily items at waist height, and give everything a fixed place you can reach without moving anything else. The containers come last. Most people buy them first, which is why so many kitchens end up with neat boxes full of things nobody uses.

The other thing an expert does that most people skip: they empty a cabinet completely before deciding anything. Standing in front of a full shelf trying to rearrange it is how you end up with the same arrangement in a slightly different order.

Where do you start?

One cabinet. Not the kitchen. Pick the one that annoys you most, usually the one under the sink or the one with the pans, and do only that today. A whole kitchen in one go takes six hours, you get tired at the fourth cabinet, and you end up making decisions you regret about things you then cannot find for a month.

Take everything out. Everything. Wipe the shelf down while it is empty, because this is the only chance you will get for a year. Then sort into three piles on the floor: keep, relocate, and go. Be honest about the go pile. A garlic press you have used twice in four years goes. So does the fourth spatula, and the pan with the handle that wobbles.

Then, and only then, put things back. You will find you need about two-thirds of the shelf space you thought you did.

Zoning a kitchen by how you actually cook

A kitchen has five working zones, and things should live in the zone where they are used, not where there happens to be a cupboard:

• Prep (the worktop with the most clear space): knives, chopping boards, mixing bowls, the things you reach for first.
• Cooking (beside the hob): pans, oils, utensils, spices if you cook daily. Spices near the hob is controversial because heat degrades them, but a spice you have to walk across the kitchen for is a spice you stop using.
• Cleaning (under the sink): washing-up liquid, cloths, bin bags, the dish brush. Nothing else. This cabinet gets damp, so nothing that rusts or spoils.
• Consumables: dry goods, tins, baking. Near where you unpack shopping, if the kitchen allows it.
• Occasional: the big pot, the serving dish, the cake tin. High shelves or the back of a deep cupboard, because you use them four times a year.

The test for any item: if you use it every day, it should be between hip and shoulder height, at the front, reachable with one hand. If you use it twice a year, it can be anywhere. Most kitchens are organised the other way round, which is why the daily mugs are on a high shelf and the fondue set is at eye level.

How should you organise drawers?

Drawers fail in one specific way: things slide. A drawer with loose cutlery, loose utensils and loose batteries becomes a soup within a week. Dividers are the whole answer, and they do not have to be expensive.

• Deep drawers: one layer, with dividers that run the full depth. Two layers in a deep drawer means the bottom layer is invisible, which means it may as well not exist.
• Shallow drawers: an insert with fixed compartments, sized to what actually goes in them. Measure the drawer's internal dimensions before buying anything, including the height, and check that the insert does not stop the drawer closing.
• Cutlery: a compartment tray, and keep it to what you use. Six of everything, not eighteen.
• Utensils: either a crock in the drawer with the handles up, or a divider. Not both. A crock in a drawer catches the drawer front.
• Junk drawer: allow exactly one, keep it in the least accessible spot, and empty it every six months. If you have three junk drawers you have a storage problem, not a tidiness problem.

One useful habit: store lids with their bases. A pan without its lid, or a lid without its pan, is a thing you will spend four minutes looking for on a Tuesday night. Nest the pan with its lid on, or stand lids in a rack beside the pans.

Should you decant things into containers?

Sometimes. Decanting works when the original packaging is the problem: a torn bag of flour, a stack of half-open packets of pasta, a shelf of mismatched cereal boxes. It does not work when the packaging is fine and you are doing it for the photograph.

Three rules if you do it:

• Keep the cooking instructions. Cut the panel off the packet and put it inside the jar, or write the ratio on the lid. Nobody remembers the water-to-rice ratio for a brand they bought once.
• Use one type of container per shelf. Square containers waste less space than round ones. Clear beats opaque, because you can see what is running out.
• Do not decant anything you will not refill. A jar of something you bought once becomes a mystery jar within two months.

The same logic applies to under-sink cleaning products. Decanting them into matching bottles looks tidy and is genuinely dangerous if anyone in the house could mix up a descaler and a floor cleaner. Keep cleaning products in their original containers, with the label on, and keep them out of reach of children.

Small kitchens: use the walls and the door backs

Vertical space, and the backs of doors. In a small kitchen, the space above the wall cabinets and the inside of cupboard doors is free real estate:

• An over-door rack inside the cupboard for cling film, foil and baking paper, which are otherwise a pile that falls over.
• Hooks inside a cabinet door for measuring spoons and a small sieve.
• A shelf riser in a tall cabinet, which turns one shelf into two for tins and jars.
• Stackable bowls and nesting mixing bowls rather than a set that each need their own footprint.

And use the walls. A rail with hooks for utensils, a magnetic strip for knives, a small shelf for oils. Every item moved to the wall is a metre of drawer space recovered.

Keeping it organised after the good intentions fade

The system survives or fails on maintenance, and maintenance is a habit rather than a project. Three habits do most of the work:

• The one-in, one-out rule for anything durable. A new pan means an old one leaves. Not into a cupboard, out of the house.
• The five minute reset after cooking: dishes away, surfaces clear, the one thing that has migrated put back. Kitchens do not get messy in a day, they get messy in five-minute increments.
• A quarterly fifteen minutes on one cabinet. Check for the thing you have not used since the last time you checked, and take it out.

Label the shelves if it helps, particularly in a shared house or a rental where the person putting things away changes every week. A strip of masking tape and a marker is enough, and it comes off without a mark.

What does this look like in a rented or holiday property?

A rental kitchen has to work for someone who has never seen it before. That changes the logic: the priority is not what the owner uses, it is what a guest can find. Glasses and plates at eye level, near the sink. A drawer with a corkscrew, a bottle opener, a tin opener and a corkscrew again, because there is never one when you need it. A labelled shelf for tea, coffee and sugar. A folder, in the drawer, that says where the fuse box is and which bin day it is.

And a practical point we see constantly: guests put things away wet. A drying rack that actually fits beside the sink, plus a tea towel that is not decorative, prevents the cupboard smell that takes a deep clean to remove.

Cupboards and drawers are usually the last thing anyone gets to, which is why we build an hour of them into a deep clean when a property needs it. Changeovers, one-off cleans and regular visits, from Benalmádena to Estepona. Call +34 604 42 21 31 or write to [email protected]. Open every day, 08:00 to 20:00.

If you would rather hand it over: regular home cleaning in Marbella.