Organizing your kitchen work space

How is your kitchen organized? Can you find things easily and quickly? Or are you "hunting" for them? How about your dinnerware (plates, soup bowls and the like)? Is it in areas that makes retrieving and putting away easy? How about your serve-ware (serving bowls, platters etc.)? Where are they located?





I have a girlfriend who just kills me (makes me laugh my head off) when she enters my kitchen. She's under the misguided idea that everything needs to be located around the dishwasher. Sorry but I don't believe that one for a second! Locating your dishes, glasses and serving pieces is just as important as assigning work or task station areas in the kitchen. Where do you like to chop your vegetables? When using a mixer, where in your kitchen do you like to do that? Those things are just as important as to where in your kitchen your utensils and dinnerware are located.





My last kitchen was a shoebox- it had 3 upper and 3 lower cabinets where I could store things along with a whopping 3 drawers. Yes it is what you would call a Galley Kitchen (and no, we didn't live on a boat).





This kitchen is larger than my last but I find that at times I could use more storage space- only because I have more cake pans, roasting pans, cookware and spring form pans than anyone else I know, LOL! Okay so maybe having 16 place settings isn't such a good things after all, LOL! Ü Let me ask you this...do you have other items crowed around your plates and bowls? I'll use my Mom's kitchen as an example...she would have all sorts of other little things crowded around in the cabinet where she kept the plates and serving bowls, medicine bottles, a cutting board, miscellaneous papers and a jar with nails (I have no idea what was up with the nails). My point is that you should have only your dishes in the cabinet...no medications, no papers and definitely no jar with nails in it, LOL! You need to have clear access to your dinnerware and serving pieces. From the pictures here you can clearly see that I have loads of plates and bowls but there is nothing hindering the access to them. Nothing that I have to move out of the way or worry about falling out of the cabinet when retrieving anything from it.



My serving bowls are located near my gas range. It's easy to take hot items and put them into bowls or onto platters. Also my ceramic 9x13 and 8x8 bake-ware and casserole dishes are located in the same area for ease of access.





Now you may have noticed that neither of these areas is located "near" the dishwasher. The area near my dishwasher is a bit troublesome to get to really, so I prefer to have my glassware and coffee mugs located there. On the far cabinet side (the one really difficult to get to) I store lesser used items such as pitchers, sauce boats, wine glasses and pilsners (beer glasses).