10 Mistakes to Avoid when Organizing Your Kitchen

by far the biggest complaints i get from people who want to cook more food at home is one they don't have enough time and two they feel like cooking is a chore maybe they get home from a long day of work and they're just not inspired to get in the kitchen and whip up a meal and i think a big reason for this is because people are making a lot of mistakes when it comes to organizing their kitchen everyone wants the techniques they want the new recipes they want to cook better but without that foundation without an efficient and an organized kitchen well you're not going to be able to flow in the kitchen and you're certainly not going to have as much fun so today i'm going to be showing you the 10 most common mistakes that i see people making when it comes to organizing their kitchen i'm going to show you exactly how to fix them to become a much better home cook i would say the number one mistake i see with kitchen organization is people not utilizing shelves in the kitchen and it's not your fault it's just the way that kitchen design has really always been or at least for the last few decades now if you've watched me over the last decade on the internet well you've seen me in a bunch of different kitchens and one theme that goes throughout all of those kitchens is some type of shelving system to help me organize my food or my ingredients and these aren't things that were built into the kitchen every single kitchen that i've moved into i've put in shelves myself i've installed them and it's not that hard to install a simple shelf from ikea just look it up on youtube so much of modern kitchen design is built around putting things in cabinets making sure they're tucked away so no one can see anything and if that's your aesthetic that's totally fine and i'm not saying renovate your whole kitchen and get rid of all the cabinets but there's always at least one empty wall or one little space in your kitchen where you could install a shelf or some type of rack now the reason i think this is great for organization and efficiency is because you have easy access to appliances and ingredients you can just grab something off the shelf use it quickly put it back in its spot and you're on with the cooking so you can bang out meals really quickly for instance check out this picture right here taken from a student in my conquer the kitchen course this looks like efficiency someone who's ready to go a true pro home cook before everything was stuffed away in cabinets she had a little bit of space in her kitchen she put up a shelf and she got organized and she got inspired the second mistake i see all the time is just people not organizing their drawers in their kitchen all you have to do is measure the width like this and the length of your drawer go online or go into the store and find some type of organizational element that fits in your drawer i've got a few examples in this studio this one's actually adjustable so it extends a bit if you need that down here i've got these clear little bins that fit in there nice and section off this drawer for just miscellaneous tools over here i've got some wire bins of all different shapes and sizes to create some sections in this drawer there really are endless options out there you're just finding what makes sense for your own setup these pull out racks for your base cabinets are incredible because they bring the cabinet out to you making it so much easier to stay organized i believe i have some over here as well yes i do for the pot lids and then just miscellaneous tools down here tons of options out there do a little pinterest search if you need some ideas and get yourself organized now i want you to be very honest with me how many of your kitchens have a drawer that looks like this right here this drawer right here stuffed with pots and pans that's what i grew up on that was the drawer in my household that every time you tried to shut it was just a disaster pants clanking and scratching together the drawer probably breaking a few times over the years a big time mistake that i see is stuffing all of your pots and pans into a drawer this is probably one of the least efficient ways of operating your kitchen and it's why if you go into a professional kitchen and restaurant you're not gonna see very much of this they're gonna have their pots and pans hung up somewhere or maybe it's on a rack super accessible to just take whatever pot and pan you need pop it back also much better for drying purposes if these things are exposed and they're not touching each other finally you're not going to damage your pants if they're all hanging or sitting on a shelf beautifully in their own space now again you might not have space for this it's not about a complete renovation it's just about thinking of potential solutions that can at least get you out of this disaster in my last kitchen in brooklyn really simple solution i installed an ikea hanging rack i could fit maybe six pans on there that was perfect as long as you have those few essential pots and pans maybe three of them in a space that's efficient then you can tuck away the other ones that you don't use that much just anything to get all of your pots and pans out of that one drawer please the old knife block good or bad i mean it's not terrible i just don't think it is the best option for organization and efficiency you see knife blocks they do look beautiful that's mainly the reason why i have this in my kitchen they're generally designed by a specific knife company to hold a complete collection of knives you certainly do not need a complete set of everything every type of knife ever created so for instance like this thing this is a boning knife i didn't even know what this was for a while do i need a boating knife no have i ever used this yes to open up a package like you can use a boning knife but really who's using boning knives are butchers so you get the point a lot of time these knife blocks have all of the knives and they have a specific slot for each one so what is a better solution well come over here voila so i would say about 95 of the time you're gonna be using a knife that looks like this a chef's knife and because you're using that knife so much well i have a few different types of chef's knives because i'm still using them much more than say those knives you saw before when you have a magnetic strip on a wall like this in your kitchen this becomes your batman tool belt of knives all of these knives are ready for action and the truth is i'm actually inspired to use different styles of knives at different times depending on what i'm cooking or depending on how i'm feeling maybe i want a heavier german style knife maybe i want a little more precision that day and i want a japanese blade the way you feel in the kitchen what you want to use is constantly shifting and having those knives that you use the most ready to go rather than just 15 different styles of knives that you're probably not going to use hiding away in a knife block much more efficient much more organized so another classic kitchen organization mistake i see all the time is not having all of your essential ingredients like your oils your salt and pepper those things you're using every single time you cook pretty much not having all of that organized in one space that's ready for action in every kitchen i dedicate some little shelf or some area on my counter that's gonna take care of this in this kitchen i have two spaces over here i have the salt pepper another salt shaker that i created out of this mason jar now if we flip this around over here another easy to access spot all of my essential oils and vinegar it's actually a little low right now but everything stays in this dedicated spot throw up a shelf a rack a lazy susan whatever it is and get those ingredients consolidated and within close reach to your main cooking station mistake number six don't just throw your spices in a random cabinet and think you're gonna use them probably relatable for a lot of you spices have a shelf life when we put them in a cabinet and we keep piling more spices on top of spices on top of spices well you know what happens two years later when you're doing that spring cleaning and you throw out 90 of your spices because you barely used any and they've gone bad that's what we're trying to avoid so of course if you only have a cabinet it's fine put them in there but make sure they're organized maybe put them in a jar like this that's labeled that you can see exactly what you have so you'll be a little more inspired to use it but what i would suggest as a pro home cook is having a dedicated spice rack or spice area right here is just a wall of inspiration a wall of options and flavor and if you don't have a wall in your kitchen this picture another person from my conquer the kitchen course great option just creating a little spice area on their countertop this to me is much more inspiring than just piling them away in a cabinet but there's so many different spice organization options out there just go with whatever works for you and if you do the exposed in the clear jar i actually collabed with ethan a spice expert who supplied these spices he said as long as they're away from direct sunlight hitting these spices or direct heat from say an oven they are fine to be exposed like this so we're in my pantry area of the studio and you can see i have a lot of different things here classic just pantry ingredients pots in place some equipment a bunch of jars more ingredients and one of the most common mistakes i see is that people don't put in any effort to level up their pantry organization this goes for just regular cabinets as well it doesn't take that much effort to get a few little organizational elements to completely change the way your pantry operates i've got these lazy susans that you can throw anything on here down here is so simple but it keeps things so much more organized having different styles of containers where you can actually consolidate certain ingredients keeping those sectioned off in their own area within the pantry is going to help you stay so much more organized another classic mistake too many people are throwing away free organization tools right here these takeout containers the best free organization you can have and if you're concerned about quality and bpa i've linked a set of these that you can get on amazon that are bpa free a little higher quality but these things are the absolute best a must for a pro home cook if you check this out so here are just a few random food containers from my drawer now if you're looking for a really good seal if you're traveling with food these aren't going to be the best option a thin little piece of plastic not so much something like this is much better but all of these food containers are different sizes they have different lids some of them are not clear so you can't see in them whereas these right here are the best because they are all one size lid they all can be stacked on top of each other so you are saving so much space you can have a hundred of these things in a very small amount of space compared to something like this that's taking up room a true sign of a pro home cook i would say is if your refrigerator looks like this right here and to be honest this is kind of stolen from that chef culture you see organization like this in most restaurants because every single ingredient every single element of a dish or full dish gets its own container so i find that there's much less waste in the kitchen when you're using these because you can separate out all of those individual ingredients you can label them if you want and then they're really easy to stack in your pantry or your refrigerator so they're nice and organized so you can rummage through them leading to much less food just stuff in the back your refrigerator that's going to rot away all right so this next one you might think is out of your control but i'm going to show you some things to regain a little bit of counter space back because what i see is too many people are not maximizing counter space in their kitchen now of course this is a big studio i started from scratch i could build the counter space i needed not everyone has that option but i will say you probably have more room than you think and the reason i bring that up is because in my last kitchen which was 50 square feet my last kitchen was probably the side my last kitchen was kind of like the size of this table right here so i built a custom little table i saw the butcher block in half that was probably one foot wide that went across the space opposite to the appliances then i brought in a little tiny countertop from ikea that i filmed most of the cooking show from so if you feel like you're lacking counter space maybe you've got a few square feet that you could bring in a tiny little table any type of extra space is gonna help you a ton so i've got a dedicated area for a paper towel roll but i don't use it that often mainly just for really nasty or big messes in the kitchen 95 of the time i'm using dish towels dish towels are cook's best friend and if you're gonna really take advantage of dish towels well you need some type of organization for them so what i have right here is a little hanging area right under my island this is actually a metal strip with magnetic hooks that i installed because when we're using dish towels all the time you need some system to make sure they're not molding some type of hanging area in your kitchen another example over here under the spice rack same magnetic strip i'm using this for aprons but the key is some type of hanging system some type of hook where you can hang your dish towels so they can dry out and they don't get moldy so if you're feeling stuck if you're feeling a little uninspired well you might want to start with this stuff right here the foundation of cooking is really having the proper setup the proper organization and it's the reason why it's the first thing we cover in my new course conquer the kitchen we start with all the equipment all the essentials that you need to really become a pro home cook how to organize your kitchen then we move on to the cooking skills and the cooking knowledge everything you need to really break free of recipes for good and find your own unique expression in the kitchen so if you're interested in finding out more about that course check out the link below on how to enroll and i will see you in the next video bye

Channel: Pro Home Cooks

Views: 2,089,632

Keywords: brothers, green, mike, michael, josh, joshua, greenfield, cooking, how to, recipe, video, how to cook, how to make, cooking video, enzyme tire spunk

Id: beP0QXH4Ta0

Length: 14min 10sec (850 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 31 2021