Welcome to Day 5 of my month long series “How to Organize Your Kitchen Frugally in 31 Days”. Every day during the month of October I will be sharing an organized space in my kitchen with you. My goal is to inspire you and give you ideas on how you can organize your kitchen.
If you missed it, you may want to read why I’m embracing my outdated kitchen. It might give you a little perspective on why the pictures of my kitchen organization won’t be “magazine worthy”, but helpful for real life organization.
Yesterday I talked about how my kitchen is organized into “zones”. I described how planning your kitchen organization with a strategy is important to achieve the best functionality possible. Who wants to keep walking backing forth from cabinet to counter, cabinet to counter, when you can have everything you need for the meal you are preparing right at your fingertips?
Here is a picture of the part of the kitchen we’re working in today to give you the big idea of where I keep things. You can see similar images of the rest of my cupboards in yesterday’s post.
Today I’m sharing my “lunch” zone with you. I do most almost all of my food prep on the countertops in this corner of the kitchen, so it makes sense to keep everything in one place.
Since I don’t have unlimited cabinet space, I only keep things I use regularly at the front and center of each cupboard. I keep the kids’ lunch boxes/bags in our organized front hall closet on hooks with their backpacks. That way they don’t take up precious space in the cupboard.
I keep everything I need to pack their lunches in this space. I also keep all of our breads, bagels, tortillas, croutons, rolls, etc. in this space. I have tried keeping bread in so many places over the years, but this location has been my favorite and has worked great for several years. I love that it’s low enough that (most) of my kiddos can reach it if they want to make a sandwich, and that it’s right at my fingertips when making lunch.
Does it seem strange to you that I keep the croutons in the bread cupboard? Well, again, this is the space where I do my food prep, so when I’m making salads for lunch or dinner (which we eat regularly), I don’t have to go to the other side of the kitchen to get them from the pantry. Keep things you use frequently in the place where you’ll use them – it saves so much time.
That’s it for today. Where do you keep your bread? Do you have a lunch station?
Join me tomorrow to see how I organize my dishes.
I actually do have a lunch station. I have a clear glass cutting board on my counter with a sign underneath that says, “Lunch Packing Area.” Just to try to keep one space clear. The lunch stuff is right above the cutting board. Juice boxes and all.
We have been keeping our bread in the freezer for years since freshness is really important to us. Whether it is our homemade bread, which is what I mostly do now, or store bought, freezing preserves the freshness and 15-20 seconds in the microwave brings it back to that just-baked freshness.
We too have zones in our kitchen, which looks to be similar in counter and cabinet space, but narrower since there is no door; it is “U” shaped. When we had our cabinets refinished a few years ago, we took the time to re-think where items were located and made some changes that were much more functional. We changed some lower cabinets into drawers (for pots & pans and plastics), added a few roll-outs, converted 4 small drawers into 1 small and 2 medium ones, re-designed one small cabinet to hold baking sheets upright and added extra shelves in a few of our upper cabinets. All this greatly improved functionality and increased storage capacity as well.
We are so thankful to the Lord for giving us the appearance of a brand new kitchen, for a very low budget. We kept the bases of all the cabinets and added new doors and drawers, which was way more budget friendly.
Setting up a baking zone has been the most helpful. All our flours and other baking ingredients in the upper cupboards in labeled containers above the baking zone counter space, while bowls, measuring cups & spoons and baking sheets and pans are in lower cupboards. It works really well.
Dishes, glasses and silverware and our plastic storage containers are all near the dishwasher, which makes for easy unloading and putting away.
We don’t have a separate pantry, so we created a pantry cupboard in the upper cabinets to the right and left of the stove, which is the bottom of the “U” shaped kitchen. Not ideal, but we had to work with what we had.
Thanks for sharing your ideas. Its good to re-think organization to see if it still works. Different seasons of life bring different needs. We are post children, so that changes a lot.
God bless!
I am really enjoying the 31 days of organizing your kitchen frugally. It had been very interesting to read and I have taken a few ideas from it. I have limited counter space but lots of cupboards so the space isn’t an issue for me. I do have a few zones however my lunch zone only holds the containers for lunch and not the food. That is still in my pantry.
Keep up the great work. I look forward to seeing what you’re doing each day.
Thank you
I love the idea of stations. I literally have one upper cabinet so all our bowls/plates and cups are stored there. I was blessed with a large pantry but it’s a good 15 feet away from the kitchen. (I always joke that this place was totally designed by a man, because no woman in her right mind would layout a kitchen this way) Like you suggest though, I’ve learned to embrace it, because I dont really have another option! I have a large/shallow basket in my pantry that holds bread, chips, juice boxes and anything else we may need to prep lunches each morning. It has made that dreaded chore go so much smoother each day. I make lunches and just pop the basket back in the pantry each day and its done!
Genius! I don’t have a lunch station, and my bread is either on the counter, in a basket, or in the fridge. Hmmm…I need to rethink this for sure.
I now have a lunch station. Thank you for the fabulous idea. I have always kept all of the thermoses and lunch containers in one spot but I never thought to add the lunch snacks to that area. That is a fabulous idea. I keep my bread in the freezer due to the type of bread that I buy. I buy Ezekial bread and it has to stay frozen due to its lack of preservatives or it will spoil very quickly. I keep my tortillas in the fridge since I buy raw tortillas.
I am curious about one thing, why the marshmallows in the lunch station? I would have thought that those would be in the beverage station.
Haha! Good question, Joy. I was wondering if someone would notice those. Occasionally my kids like to have a marshmallow and peanut butter sandwich. 🙂
Just wondering why a kids’ lunch box packing area…don’t you home school? Sorry if this is too nosy, it just made me curious.
Why would a homeschooler need to pack lunches?