How I Organize My Kitchen Utensil Drawers

Are your kitchen utensil drawers full of stuff and hard to close? Here’s how I decluttered and organized my drawers for easy access!

As a blogger (And busy mom), I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. I’m always making up a breakfast or recording a bunch of recipes at once.

Because of this, I use a huge variety of kitchen utensils. Spatulas, spoons, whisks… I have a lot, and thankfully my kitchen drawers are pretty big.

But honestly, I found myself pushing things out of the way to get to what I needed. I had more than was necessary, the messy drawers became hard to close, and my system wasn’t working as well as I wanted.

Do you find yourself getting a little lost in the kitchen, too? A well-organized kitchen helps to save time and energy, which is especially important with ADHD. So I decided to give my drawers a little sprucing up.

In this post, I’m going step by step how I organized my kitchen utensil drawers for easy access. It’s not beautiful and it doesn’t match, but that’s okay! I’ll show you what I used and the process I went through.

Empty drawers and sort utensils

My first step was to empty out my two drawers. I have a fairly small kitchen, so most of my cooking items are right by the stove.

I have one skinnier drawer for my cooking utensils like spoons and spatulas, and a much wider one for the measuring cups and spoons, and other miscellaneous tools.

They’re both somewhat of a shallow drawer, so I have to use my space effectively. Deep kitchen drawers would work better for me, but I have to use what I’ve got.

It had definitely been awhile since I last did this, because the organizers I had were a little dirty inside. I washed those and set them aside to dry.

Here’s what was inside that drawer. Back when my daughter Allison was younger, I used fun little food picks on her lunches to get her to try new foods. It grew to a rather huge collection, and after awhile she just didn’t want them anymore. So they sat in the back of the drawer… and with ADHD, if you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist.

I also had cookie cutters– smaller and larger ones- to cut sandwiches and smaller foods. Again, those went unused for quite awhile. I put all of those, and the food picks, in a bag to donate.

In addition, I picked out a bunch of spatulas I never use along with a few other utensils. Including a manual can opener, which I hadn’t used in a year because I had a new spiffy electric opener.

All in all, I had two bags of items to donate. That made me happy, knowing I had more space to work with now!

Find containers and organizers

Next I had to figure out what containers I needed to organize my tools. I definitely had extra space now, but needed a plan to keep it all organized.

The little bins I had were from various places. I bought one from Dollar Tree, which is an amazing place for storage containers. And the rest were from an office organizing kit. The small green ones were the perfect size for the food picks and smaller items, and the large pink one is great for the whisks and other larger items.

I ended up taking out the small green ones and used a larger pink one for the seasoning packets.

If you want to get fancy, you can certainly get some designated kitchen drawer organizers. They come in a variety of sizes and materials; but honestly, regular plastic bins will work just as well.

Place in a spot that works for your brain

The most important thing about organizing a space is that it has to work for you! Your kitchen may look a lot different from mine, and you may have more or less space.

What works for me is keeping my spoons and spatulas all in one smaller drawer. That’s the one I go to most often, so it makes sense to have the ones I use the most in one central spot.

My larger drawer still has the measuring spoons and cups and more kitchen tools, but they’re all in a spot that I know to look when I need them.

The aftermath

Clearing out all the unused items has made a huge difference. Nothing is squished anymore, and I can actually close the drawers without a fuss.

Are there more spaces I could have organized and cleared out? Oh, most definitely. I have drawers for my oven mitts and kitchen towels that definitely need to be cleared out too. Thankfully, my pantry is already organized!

But I have to start small- smaller sections at a time. That works best with my ADHD so I don’t get too overwhelmed.

What does your kitchen organization look like? Do you need to do a small makeover with your kitchen utensil drawer like I did? Just utilize the available space you have. Do what you can and make the space work for your brain!