7 Shelf Organisation Ideas to Make the Most of Your Kitchen Space

Are you struggling to make the most of space in your kitchen? If so, getting organised can help. Organising shelves allows you to make the most of a small space, with a place for everything and everything in its place.

A common question is where to start with shelf organisation. It can seem like a daunting task, especially if you’ve got a lot of different shelves to organise. In this guide, we’re going to take a look at the best shelf organisation ideas and help you turn your ideas into reality.

Categorise Your Kitchen

Before we begin, it’s a good idea to think about the different categories of items that are in your kitchen. If you’re a keen cook, you likely have spices, dry goods, tins, jars, and more! Knowing where to store all of these is a great place to start. Rather than having them all mixed in a muddle, think about how to group these items together.

For instance, for a neater kitchen, grouping your herbs, spices and other seasoning together is a must. Not only will it help you find them more easily, but if you choose to categorise further, for instance, by colour, you’ll have a more aesthetically pleasing space as well!

Other categories for you to consider include:

• Dry goods, such as flour, pasta and rice
• Tinned goods
• Snacks
• Wet Ingredients

Time for a Clear-Out?

While you’re categorising your kitchen, take the opportunity to take a look at the use-by dates on the food in your kitchen. Maybe there’s an old tin of something lying in the back of the cupboard that’s now just taking up space! 

If you find anything that’s out of date, now’s the time to throw it away and make some more space. This is an especially important step in small kitchens, where space is at a premium.

1. Buy a Shelf Organiser

Buying a kitchen shelf organiser is a great way to maximise your shelf space. It may seem strange since you’re adding an extra item to your kitchen, but these handy little devices can really help. In the realm of kitchen shelf organisers, there are a variety of different types available, with one great example being the spice organiser.

A spice organiser often comes with clips that allow you to attach them to the back of a cupboard door or the side of a cupboard or fridge.

A spice shelf is, in essence, a wire shelf that allows you to store a row of spice jars on each shelf, with wire or another material at each end to stop them from falling off. Some models offer one shelf per organiser, while others offer multiple tiers, which is useful if you love to cook dishes from around the world.

Another area of the kitchen for you to turn your shelf organisation skills to is the fridge. Fridges can be chaotic places, so bring some order to them by buying fridge organisers! These divide the shelves up into smaller, discrete compartments, which lets you organise different goods into different parts of the shelves, keeping everything ordered.

2. Organise Your Dry Goods

Now that you’ve sorted out your fresh produce and spices, it’s worth considering how you’re going to go about organising your dry goods. Things like pasta, rice, and flour can take up a lot of space and require airtight storage to lower the likelihood of accidentally handing over your pantry to weevils and moths. 

Jars and canisters are your friends here. Instead of making do with bulky bags of sugar, flour, pasta and rice, decant them into elegant glass jars with an airtight lid, then store them away in the cupboard. Depending on the size of the jar and the size of your cupboard, you may be able to store them either horizontally or vertically, whichever you prefer.

3. Organise Crockery and Pans

The third step that you should take, when organising your kitchen, is to organise the crockery, pots and pans. These items take up a lot of space in the kitchen cupboard, and while you may have a cabinet for these items, overspill is common.

Crockery

If this sounds like you, you should consider how you can minimise the space that these items take up. If you have a large cupboard for your crockery, but without any definitive structure (other than, for instance, larger pieces on the bottom and smaller ones on top), you should have a look at buying a kitchen shelf organiser for the cupboards. These are small wire racks that have several tiers along their height, which lets you separate crockery by size, set, or any other criteria. 

For cups and mugs, if there’s any space left in your cabinet, you may wish to consider installing hooks, allowing you to hang your mugs for easy access. Failing that, a mug tree lends a great retro look to any kitchen.

Pots and Pans

Pots and pans can be a tricky proposition. Stacking can be an easy way to minimise how much space they take up, but be careful! Nesting the pots and pans can lead to scratches, so you need something between the bottom of one pot and the surface of another. If your pots don’t have feet, you will likely need to buy pot protectors, but a tea towel can also work in a pinch.

Another option is to install hooks in your kitchen and hang your pans from the wall. While this isn’t an efficient way to use your space, it can add a rustic feel to your kitchen, which might be a worthy exchange, depending on your priorities. 

4. Tins, Snacks and More

Now that you’ve got a lot of your pantry organised, it’s time to have a look at what you need to do with your tins, snacks and other miscellaneous kitchen items. One easy rule to remember, when it comes to organisation, is if you can stack something, stack it! Tins are particularly good for this. Even in smaller cupboards, you should be able to stack a couple of tins to create more space.

For snacks and other items in your cupboard, you could grab a kitchen storage rack or basket to keep your food separate. One rack could be for snacks, another for tins, and another for soups, and so on. Racks or baskets are a great shelf organisation tool for things like teabags and coffee, too. 

5. Larger Appliances

The task of storing larger kitchen appliances like slow cookers, air fryers and the like is a tough one for even a seasoned kitchen organiser. These items take up a lot of space and don’t tend to be particularly stackable. So, what should you do?

One easy option for storing larger appliances is to buy a larger kitchen storage rack with big openings, such as some cube storage units. These tend to be large enough to fit larger appliances with ease.

If you don’t have the room for a cube storage unit, you may want to look up. There’s often vertical space going empty in kitchens, be it on top of shelves, fridges, or somewhere else. You may want to grab a stepladder and store something up above head height, particularly if you don’t use it regularly. Do make sure that the appliance is securely stored and not blocking any vents, however.

6. Knives, Forks, Spoons and Utensils

Cutlery, like knives, forks and spoons, are used every day, so they need to be within easy reach in the kitchen. Storing them in a drawer near your cooker or dining table is ideal, but we’d recommend that you grab an organiser for your drawer, if it doesn’t have one already. Leaving cutlery to lie on a drawer’s bare surface tends to make it grimy.

For utensils, organisation is easy. Put the ones that you use the least in a drawer, complete with an organiser. For utensils that you often use, we’d recommend storing them in a large metal utensil holder, next to your prep area. 

7. Create a Prep Space

Speaking of a prep space, it’s a good idea to make sure that one surface in your kitchen is consistently clean and free of clutter. Whether you love cooking or prefer not to, having a space that is ready to use makes the process far easier. 

It also makes clean up a breeze, as everything that you need to wash or put in the dishwasher is right there, ready to be cleaned. 

Still Not Got Enough Space?

All the kitchen shelf organisation skills in the world can only take you so far. If you don’t have enough space in your kitchen, you may need to dispose of some items or, if you don’t want to part with them, put them into storage. 

If you decide to store items from your kitchen, we can help you. We offer personal storage at a price to suit you, no matter the size of your home. Interested in making some more space in your home by storing unused items? Get in touch with us today!

Shelf Organisation Frequently Asked Questions

What’s the Most Efficient Way to Organise My Kitchen?

It can be tough to know where to start with kitchen organisation. We’d recommend working in zones, going area by area, such as starting with the fridge, then the drawers, then the worktops. When organising these zones, try and group items that will be used together, for example, keeping your utensils together.

How Should I Keep Shelves Neat?

When you take something off the shelf, put it back in the same space. As you add more to your shelves, always add to an appropriate area. Try to limit how much you purchase if your shelves are nearly full, sometimes a “less is more” approach can help keep things neat and tidy.