3 Inexpensive Ways to Organize Your Kitchen: Recycling
Are your kitchen shelves an unorganized mess of miscellaneous cans, jars, and mixes? Do you find it hard to find exactly what you need, when you need it?
Organizing your kitchen doesn’t have to be expensive. In fact, by recycling materials that you probably already have on hand, you can inexpensively organize your kitchen.
RECYCLE SMALL BOXES
Many products come in boxes. Instead of throwing them out, find a few small boxes from your favourite products and use them to organize your shelves. If your box has flaps, cut them off to give yourself easy access to the contents.
Try using a box for quick, healthy snacks that you can grab on the go (ie: granola bars, oatmeal, snack packs…etc), a box for all your jell-o, pudding, and cake mixes, and another one for bagged pasta and noodles.
RECYCLE EGG CARTONS
Some families buy large 30-egg flats for their family. This usually means the eggs are stored in the back of your fridge and you end up putting other food on top, making easy access to the eggs difficult. If this is you, or you don’t have an egg organizer built into the door of your fridge, you’ll love this next tip.
Measure the width and length of a compartment in the door of your fridge. Take an old egg carton and cut it so it fits in that space (10 eggs is usually a good number for the average fridge). Now fill it with eggs. When you have time, or when your door supply of eggs starts to dwindle, re-fill it from the eggs at the back of the fridge.
RECYCLE OLD PLASTIC CONTAINERS
Many of us do this already, but it can’t hurt to reinforce it again. Margarine and old Chinese food take-out containers (the plastic style) are make great portions for leftovers. Put your left over stir fry, meats, or vegetables in these containers (individually , or in together in pre-made meals).
When you have a large family dinner with many different foods, do you pack leftovers of each food item separately? If you do, then to make a meal from leftovers, you need to take out each container and put a bit of each one on a plate to reheat.
If you use leftover plastic containers, you can pre-make meals with a portion of each item. Then, when it comes to eat it, you just take out one container and put that container straight in the microwave (it even saves you extra dishes).
Do you use recycled materials to organize your kitchen? Share your tips with others in the comments of this post. Together we can save unnecessary waste from our landfills, and add a little bit of organization to our kitchen.
