Get Your Kitchen Clutter Under Control With 5 Long-Lasting Tips

Pot lids, cutting boards, spice racks — oh my. Because we use our kitchens daily, it’s easy for organization to fall by the wayside. It doesn’t help that some of the items we use most often, like pots, pans, and baking sheets are unwieldy and awkward to store. And nothing’s more frustrating than rifling through a disorganized spice cabinet, looking for the seasoning you need, while your dinner is burning on the stovetop. If your cabinets and counters are piled high, try these expert tricks to get your kitchen clutter under control.

Contain grocery bags with a tissue box.

We all have that “bag of bags” in the back of our pantry — but this method makes it hard to grab just one when we need it. A better catchall: Empty tissue boxes, says organizer Nancy Traylor. “The openings are perfectly designed for dispensing grocery or garbage bags—or even cleaning rags—one at a time. And you can easily tack the box to the wall or a cabinet door to make smart use of vertical space,” she adds.

Tidy up spices with a DIY lazy Susan.

No need to buy this spinning device — it’s easy to make your own and keep spices within reach. To do: Place a few marbles in a pie plate, then set another pie plate on top and fill it with spice jars. The marbles let the top plate spin easily. Says Eileen Roth, author of Organizing for Dummies (Buy from Amazon, $13.59): “It also works great for soup cans that often get lost in the pantry.”

Keep cleaning supplies neat with a sliding boot tray.

The problem with stashing cleaning bottles under your kitchen sink? The cabinets tend to be deep and narrow, causing items to get lost in the back. To sidestep this space issue, just place your supplies on a boot tray, then slide it into the cabinet, suggests Roth. “You’ll be able to slide the tray in and out easily to grab what you need, plus it will catch drips and spills from the bottles.”

Corral lids with a sticky hook trick.

Some of the worst kitchen clutter culprits are pot and pan lids: You can’t stack them, and they’re usually made from fragile materials like glass. To stash lids so they’re easy to grab yet out of the way, place two hooks on the inside of a cabinet door at about the four and eight o’clock positions to fit the circumference of the lid, says home renovation expert Andre Kazimierski. They’ll slide right in.

Maximize cabinet space with file organizers.

Cutting boards and baking sheets creating cabinet chaos? To the rescue: “Magazine and file holders are perfect for keeping these slender items easy to access,” promises organizer Christina Giaquinto, who runs ModularClosets.com. Just pop the file holders into tight cabinets to almost double your usable space.

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This article originally appeared on our sister site, Woman’s World.