It’s always nice to move into a new place because that means you get to organize it exactly how you want.
When you get to your kitchen cabinets you know that your sweet spices are going to go on one side and the spicy stuff on the other.
After a couple of months, you go into your cabinet and things aren’t the way they started off.
Your spices are mixed up. Plates are where the bowls used to be.
It’s complete chaos.
The question then becomes do you move into another place to start over again or do you try to get a hold of this chaos?
While I’m all for moving to a new place the easiest route is finding ways to organize your kitchen cabinets.
11 DIY Ways to Organize Your Kitchen Cabinets
You don’t need a professional organizer (yes, that’s a profession) to come in and organize your cabinets for you because you can do everything yourself as you’ll see with this list.
What makes these solutions so great is that they all use easily attainable items to really help you not only organize your kitchen items but also make it seem like you have more space than before.
Seriously, it’s like magic.
1. Hang Oven Mitts and Hot Pads with Adhesive Hooks
Command hooks or adhesive hooks, it doesn’t really matter what you call them because they are awesome and you need them.
Seriously, you can probably find a way to use these in every single room in your home. That’s how effective they are.
Image courtesy of The Krazy Coupon Lady.
While most people like to put their oven mitts and hot pads in drawers, you might find a better use for those spaces. Why not hang them up inside of a cabinet where they take up minimal space?
2. Store Items Based on Usage
This one seems like common sense but something I never considered. The idea here is that you store your items based on how often you use them.
Image courtesy of Julie Blanner.
So that fancy China that you only bring out when the in-laws are in town shouldn’t be on the bottom shelf. In fact, it might not be in the kitchen at all but if it must then put it on the top shelf.
When you organize things this way it saves you more time than you realize. The only problem is understanding how often you use things so it might be something that you have to revisit every couple of months.
3. Use Sink Caddies for Storage
Sink caddies can be used to store smaller goods within your pantry or cabinets.
Image courtesy of Make Bake Celebrate.
This works especially well for those random seasoning packets that always seem to end up the in drawers. No longer will you have to find where the chili seasoning is because it’s hanging up nicely in the sink caddy that isn’t on the sink.
4. Use Stackable Mesh Shelves
The better you get at utilizing vertical space, the better you will get at organizing.

Utilizing stackable mesh shelves really helps to keep the kitchen organized. You can find them in all sizes and colors.
We really love these Ybmhome Black Steel Mesh ones because they look slick, are lightweight, and just the right size for stacking the smaller items in our kitchen.
5. Hang Up Trash Rolls
Trash bag rolls are always in a weird place. They might be in the corner of your pantry. They might be under the sink.
Everybody has their own unique place for storing them and they are always kept in the box that they are packaged in.
But what if you could change all of that?
Simply Organized shows you an awesome technique for storing your trash bags under your sink and making them easily accessible like a roll of toilet paper.
However, do not use them like a roll of toilet paper, that is not their purpose.
6. Vertical Baking Pan Storage
While baking pans are usually thin, they take up a lot of surface area when they are laid flat.
This means they take up a lot of space no matter where you put them.
However, what if you were to stack them vertically? Then they wouldn’t take up as much surface area and you could probably fit more in a smaller space!
Image courtesy of The Organized Wife.
To accomplish this, you just need to get metal file holders and place the sheets in them.
Odds are you don’t store files so you might as well put these things to good use.
7. Mount File Holders Inside Your Cabinet

Back-to-back file holder tips. You can use these file holder or magazine holders to store those pesky aluminum foil and saran wrap boxes.
We really love these Ikea Document holders not only because we love Ikea, but also because we love the color and feel of them.
8. Use a Lazy Susan
I always feel bad for Susan. She gets a bad rap all because of this awesome piece of awesomeness.
Image courtesy of I Heart Organizing.
In this awesome tutorial you can learn how to build your own lazy Susan to allow yourself easy access to a number of things in your cabinet.
What’s the point of having to take things out of your cabinet just so you can reach the back of it?
Put those items on spin cycle (get it?) so that you have easy access to whatever you want.
9. Use a Chalkboard for Measuring Hints
Easily my favorite tip on this list.
Image courtesy of Tidbits from the Tremaynes.
I mean look at this thing of beauty.
While having a smartphone is great because it provides easy access to measuring equivalents what if you didn’t need to try or wipe your hands every time to check them?
Just open up your cabinet and voila! All of the measuring equivalents that you need are right there in front of you.
Pretty brilliant.
10. Use Stackable Clear Containers for Bulk Food
Do you like to buy your food in bulk? Then you need to get in on this tip!
Image courtesy of The Social Home.
There is no reason why you need to take up a ton of horizontal space to store your bulk food items.
Utilize all of your cabinet space with some stackable clear containers. We like to use these Sterlite 6-quart clear containers for the really big bulk food items that we purchase.
11. Install a Pull Spice Rack

You don’t need to push all of your good spices to the back of the cabinet. Instead, get a pull spice rack that will allow you to easily slide your spices in and out of place.
Keep Your Kitchen Cabinets Organized
As you can see with a couple of simple items you can easily get a hold of your kitchen cabinets.
There is no reason why they should get the best of you.
If you’re looking for more ways to organize rooms in your home then check out:
- 11 Creative Ways to Keep Your Kitchen Organized
- 15 Superb Bathroom Organization Hacks You Need Now
- 9 Great DIY Makeup Organization Ideas You Can Do Today
When you’re done with these then you can move on to these garage organization ideas.