Are you worried about a cluttered kitchen cabinet? Well, you are not alone! Almost all our kitchen cabinets are a giant mess of pots, pans, knocked-over sugar jars, stacks of tissues, and unnecessary stuff shoved in. So are there some ways to hide these messes?
Here are 12 ways to hide kitchen cabinet clutter:
- Clear out any extra mugs.
- Cookbooks be-gone.
- No extra water bottles.
- Keep the best gadgets and utensils.
- Throw away small sauce and spice packs.
- Discard those takeaway menus.
- Reduce your glasses and dishes.
- Remove small, unused appliances.
- All expired food packets must go.
- Clear off broken plates you are emotionally attached to.
- Dispose of excess takeaway plastic containers.
- Throw out old or unused oil bottles.
Now, if you are ready to declutter your kitchen cabinet, check out these amazing tips. We will dive into deep cleaning the cabinet and help you understand how to dispose of different types of items in this storage space. Let’s explore the above kitchen clean-up hacks.
1. Clear Out Any Extra Mugs
If you are a unique mug collector, this is a different story. However, if you have too many mugs taking up a chunk of your cabinet, it’s time to dispose of a few. You might have many mugs and not even use all of them. You may also own many mugs due to people gifting them to you during:
- Your birthday
- Office parties
- As promotional brand gifts
- Your anniversary
- As a Christmas gift etc.
And since you cannot say no to a gift, you may be unconsciously hoarding them in your cabinet.
To break this cycle, the best thing to do is repurpose them throughout the home. Disposing of these mugs will add unnecessary waste and pollute the world. Instead, you can use the extra mugs in your kitchen cabinet in various ways such as:
- Grow some houseplants.
- Turn them into candle holders.
- Use them as soup bowls.
- Cook ramen, pasta, and cakes inside them.
- Use them to serve drinks to guests.
- Organize your office stationeries inside them.
- Repurpose them to hold your everyday-use utensils.
2. Cookbooks Be-Gone
Just like mugs, you might have a lot of cookbooks lying around. You might have bought some out of curiosity or maybe your friends gifted you some to encourage your culinary passion. Of course, you could have some just because you are experimental with diets and international cuisines. But do you use them all?
Books can use up a lot of space in your cabinet and not be helpful for years. So why let them sit around gathering dust? Instead, use them for useful purposes like:
- Re-gifting them to close family members and friends.
- Donating them to culinary schools.
- Opting to exchange them for books in your favorite genres.
- Contributing to local thrift stores.
- Selling them off on online marketplaces.
The above ways are great for repurposing your books as gifts, sources of knowledge, and donations to different organizations. After clearing them off your shelves, the kitchen cabinet will have an instant space expansion (source).
3. No Extra Water Bottles
Do you store extra water bottles in your cabinet? You might get them from:
- Marathons and other sporting events
- Office parties
- Amusement parks
- As prizes, etc.
Some of these bottles may be very old and contain Bisphenol A (BPA, for short), which is harmful to your body. Many manufacturing units use BPA to create polycarbonate plastic bottles hence you will find these bottles carrying the beverages you buy or forming your food containers.
BPA can negatively affect your endocrine system and that of your kids. According to Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health (CCCEH), BPA blocks proper hormonal functions, which can harm the system (source).
Children exposed to excessive BPA might suffer from:
- Anxiety
- ADHD
- Clinical depression
- Obesity
- Diabetes
- Heart disease
You need to dispose of these water bottles correctly so they can be recycled and reused. As for the lack of suitable alternatives, you can always restock with stainless-steel bottles that are more hygienic and safer than plastic bottles. Furthermore, you can keep reusing them for days without worrying about their durability. The MEWAY Stainless Steel Water Bottle (link to Amazon) is an excellent example of these bottles.
4. Keep the Best Gadgets and Utensils
We all love the nifty cooking gadgets and utensils we see and buy online. These can be:
- Handheld blenders
- Touchscreen toasters
- Portable cereal cups
- Silicone egg rings
- Cutting board with drawers (source).
Each of these utensils and gadgets has specific usage, but they are not things you might use daily. They can cram up and clutter the insides of your cabinet, making it challenging to store other items.
Here is a little exercise to help convince you that you do not need them daily.
Take out all the gadgets from your kitchen cabinet, and store the least-used ones in a box in another room. If all of them have little to no use throughout a month, it is time to let them go.
One of the best ways is to sell them off at an online marketplace. You can also donate them to clear up space and let them be more purposeful instead of lying around collecting dust.
5. Throw Away Small Sauce and Spice Packs
Before storing up ketchup and oregano seasoning packets from your latest takeout, ask yourself whether you will really use them. We save these packets for later, promising ourselves that we will use them in some recipes. However, we do not end up doing so, and these condiment packets stay hidden inside our kitchen cupboard.
Some of these sauces and seasonings also expire and should be gotten rid of. Instead of storing them, you can do either of two things.
One way is to throw away the packets entirely. The other option is to repurpose the spice packets that are not near their expiry date. Doing so will have you fully utilize them.
Sometimes these spices go bad and lose their potential flavors. Throwing these out will help improve your kitchen cabinet decor and space in no time!
Another way to ensure no further sauce packet hoarding is to ask the restaurants not to send you any.
Now that you have used up all the spices and sauce and emptied the cabinet, you can use it to store more essential kitchenware once more.
6. Discard Those Takeaway Menus
After ordering food online, you might receive promotional takeaway menus. Now, these menus are not too useful for everyday meals and will just gather dust while sitting on your kitchen shelf. So what is your ideal solution?
The ideal solution is to dispose of the menus and make room in your storage space for other foods and utensils. If you like the restaurants, you can check out their online menu and order from the store through food-delivery apps.
Doing so helps you clear up a lot of valuable space inside your cabinet (source).
7. Reduce Your Glassware and Dishes
Glasswares and dinner plates are always the number one culprit in cluttering a kitchen cabinet. Now, we all have the regular dishes and special occasion dishes we bring out when someone visits our homes. So how to know which ones to dispose of?
The best dishes are typically gifts from your near and dear ones. They are made of fine china and cost a fortune, making it difficult to use them on regular days.
Now, one of the fool-proof ways to know if you should keep them is to recall their usefulness. If you remember using them within the last few months, they have earned their spot in the cabinet.
However, if you have forgotten about these plates, then it is best to re-sell them for re-utilization by other families. The same goes for glassware.
If you always find over five to six glasses available for your drink, you need not worry.
However, if you find more unused glassware in your kitchen than used, sell them off to online marketplaces to clear up your cabinet space.
8. Remove Small, Unused Appliances
Small appliances like the waffle maker, OTG ovens, and toasters sometimes take up much countertop space. Hence, you might be storing them inside the kitchen cabinet for years and rarely using them.
If you have too many appliances, make note of them and check the ones you need frequently. The rest should be sold off responsibly to ensure more space and utility inside your kitchen cabinet.
You can also re-shelf and rearrange them appropriately to save more space without discarding your special kitchen appliances.
You may have some gadgets you use more seasonally. For example, the juicer during the summer and the ramen cups for reheating in winter. Rearranging your current appliances and selling off the rarely-used ones will help declutter your kitchen cabinet, leaving space for essential kitchen equipment.
9. All Expired Food Packets Must Go
If you have not cleared out your kitchen cabinet in a while, get ready to meet some expired food packets amidst the mess. These can be:
- All types of snacks
- Chips
- Juice tetra packs
- Condiment packets
- Ramen packets
- Instant soup packets, etc.
These may have been sitting in your cupboard for too long and can pose health risks if consumed. Why let them sit idle and take up space? Ensure you throw away all expired food items and seasonings to save some much-needed cabinet space.
To check the expiry date, inspect the back of the packet and finalize your disposal. These packets are often located at the far end of your storage areas, sitting in the corner and becoming more useless by the day.
Keep in mind that there is a safe way to dispose of expired food products,
While discarding these packets, empty the contents and dump this separately from the containers. Doing so can prevent pets from eating expired food that can affect their health. It also helps in disposing non-recyclable trash in a proper way.
By doing this you have decluttered the cabinet from expired content and created more space for other healthy and fresh products (source).
10. Clear off Broken Plates You Are Emotionally-Attached To
Do you have any broken and chipped cups or dishes in your cupboard? It might be a favorite dish you refuse to throw away due to your emotional attachment. However, there are some ways you can get rid of them without feeling burdened or guilty.
If you have been hoarding chipped and broken plates and cups, ask yourself these questions to prepare yourself for the disposal process:
- When did I use it last, and do I want to again?
- Was it an expensive purchase?
- Does its price matter anymore after all these years/months?
- If I throw it, will I be repurchasing it?
- Do I have another set of dishes that look the same?
- How much space is it taking up inside the cabinet?
- Is keeping it helping my cause?
If you can answer these questions and ease your doubts, the disposal process will be easy and stress-free. And if you still cannot dispose of the hoarding, ask someone to help you throw the dishes for you. You can ask them to:
- Throw away the plates instead.
- Help you during the emotional journey of disposing of utensils you have an attachment to.
- Help you clean up the cabinet and make space for new items.
11. Dispose of Excess Takeaway Plastic Containers
If you have excess plastic containers plus their lids in your cabinet, it will be full of clutter. These may be containers from your favorite Chinese takeaway or a roadside taco shop you just discovered.
These often-mismatched containers, at times with missing lids, generally take up a lot of space and lose their purpose, making them useless.
You might not use all of them daily to send anyone food or other products, so try to dispose of them ethically. Check if all the containers have their fitting lids. If there are mismatched lids, throw them away and include the containers.
12. Throw Out Old or Unused Oil Bottles
If you have stored oil bottles in your kitchen cabinet for too long, remove them immediately. Most of the oil bottles might have loosened caps due to oily hands fixing them.
This can lead to cooking oil spilling over nearby objects. Spilled oil has a sticky smell which might cover your entire kitchen cabinet if you do not act quickly.
Oil marks are also hard-to-clean, mainly due to the powerful stench.
When left inside closed-off containers, some oils tend to go rancid and taste horrible. Moreover, they can stain nearby utensils and food packets! After removing these bottles and there are oil spill marks, you can always use soapy water and wipes to clean up the area.
Recommended Reading:
- Do You Need a Pantry in Your Kitchen? How To Decide
- Complete Kitchen Cleaning Guide
- Too Much Stuff After Decluttering? Here’s What To Do
Declutter your home once and for all (Even if you have no time and don't know where to begin)! Learn More.
