Organizing Your Kitchen Into Zones

When we bought our house I was super excited to get to design a sleek black Modern Farmhouse kitchen.  See the full post on my kitchen here. But I wanted to make sure this time around, that my kitchen was as beautiful and organized on the inside as it was on the outside.  Organizing my kitchen into zones has helped me make this happen.

Now I have a well-organized and beautiful kitchen, I am able to get my food prepped, cooked, and baked in half the time. Clean up takes much less time as well, as the things that I wash most often are now closest to the dishwasher and sink.

Before I would spend tons of time looking for the item that I needed or walking back and forth from one side of the kitchen to the other.  I was exhausted from all the wasted steps.  I’m blessed to have such a big kitchen but big or small, kitchens just work more efficiently when they are well organized.  Now everything I need is an arms-length away.  I love it!  

I’m so excited about how my kitchen turned out that I just had to share it!  This is a long post so hang in there with me.  It will be worth it.  So let me break it down for you.

Designing Your Kitchen Zone Layout

First, you need to decide which zones work for you.  I decided to go with 5 main zones

• Cooking
• Baking
• Dishes
• Prep
• Storage/Food

Once you decide on the zones you want to use,  you will want to sketch out your kitchen so that you can decide how you want to lay it out.  Nothing fancy just blocks that look like your cabinet layout.   You can use graph paper or if you are a real organization nerd like me lay it out in excel. You can use this drawing to play around with the layout and move things around without having to move everything 5 times. lol  I highly encourage you to do this. It is a huge time saver.  Remember its’ just a sketch to give an idea not a Rembrandt.

I have included a copy of my zone layout so that you see how it did it.  Most of this was just common sense but when you intentionally put like things together life is just so much easier.  I also color-coded my zones so that it would be easier when I started setting it up.

Great organization Product ideas

Now that you have a plan I thought I would I would give you tips on some of the products I used to help me corral my kitchen stuff.  I really made it a lot easier to have like things in baskets and bins.  Just click on the picture to order.  

White Oak Farmhouse is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

I use these bins all over my house.  I love them because they are easy to clean and look nice in my drawers and on my shelves.

This is a great cabinet and shelf liner and I love all the colors it comes in.

I love love love my spice drawer.  I had this same setup at my last house and I knew I wanted to do the same here.  This drawer liner works great. You can see all your spices at the same time.

These are the canisters that I used for my flour, sugar, baking soda, etc. drawer.  Before organizing this drawer I would have to go through bag after bag of my ingredients before finding what I was looking for.  Now I can easily see what’s there at a glance.

Zone 1 – Cooking

For the cooking zone, I wanted to make sure that everything was as easy to reach as possible.  Of course, some of the things I use for baking are also used for cooking so they are just on the other side of the stove.

All my ladles, spatulas, large spoons, etc. in my top drawer.  My pots and pans are under this drawer.

Next to that, I have graters, can opener, baster, and tongs.  The drawer below that contains all my plastic storage ware.   That way when we finish dinner I can transfer my leftovers from the pan to a storage container to put in the fridge.  This is just another way that organizing your kitchen into zones speeds up your time in the kitchen. 

Zone 2 – Baking

Moving on to the Baking Zone.

I love baking.  It’s definitely my favorite part of cooking.  I have my Kitchen Aid Mixer on the countertop in this section.   That way I can just plug it in and start throwing something together.

I also have a set of measuring cups and spoons, the self-rising flour and sugar that I use the most on the shelf in this zone.  There are also a few mixing bowls.  Everything is within arms reach including the refrigerator. 

My two top drawers have my spice drawer and my silicone oven mitts, trivets, and my biscuit cutters and pizza cutters. 

This drawer makes my organizational maniac heart so happy!!  I found these plastic square canisters that fit my deep drawer perfectly.  The drawer holds 20 of these canisters and I have all my baking flour, brown sugar, baking soda, etc. in them.  Talking about easy to find.  They are even in alphabetical order.  haha.  I know…I know…I’m crazy.  But isn’t it wonderful!!!! I would have organized my kitchen into zones just to do this.  lol

Finishing up the Baking Zone I have the mixing bowls, mixing cups and the flour sifter.

Zone 3 – Dishes

The most important thing when organizing your kitchen into zones is that you want the dishes that you use most and take the most time to put away to be closest to the dishwasher and the sink.  You also want your dishwasher tabs and dish soap, dish towels and cloths, and scrubbers close by.   Basically everything you need to wash, dry and put your dishes away.

I have my dish detergent and dishwasher tabs under my sink directly next to the dishwasher.

On the left side of my dishwasher, I have our dishcloths.  So that I can quickly grab one when I am drying and putting away the dishes.

To the left of the dishcloth drawer, I have 3 drawers that have all the travel cups, novelty coffee cups, kids dishes, plastic silverware.

On the shelving above the dishwasher, I have our everyday dishes, cups, and glasses.  They are so easy to grab when I’m platting dinner or doing the dishes.

White Oak Farmhouse is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

A lot of you guys have asked about where I got my kitchen shelves.   So here is a link to them so you can get this look.   Read more about the secret behind these shelves here.

Zone 4 – Prep

Next up our Prep Zone.  Here I have our knives, cutting boards, plastic bags, and baking pans.  I roast a ton of vegetables so having the baking pans close makes this a great set up.

Zone 5 – Food/Snack Storage

My last Zone is my food/snack storage.   I love drawers for kitchen storage because you can see everything you have.  As you can see in my photos I’ve utilized back and bins to keep like things together.  This helps my kids find what they are looking for and to put things back when they are finished with them.  

So that concludes the tour of our Kitchen Zone Organization Plan.  I hope this has helped inspire you to organize your own kitchen into zones and cut down on the amount of time you have to spend in your kitchen so you can spend more time hanging out with the ones you love!!

Have a great one!

Christy

I’ve added my handy dandy Kitchen Zone Planning Cheatsheet here so that you can download it.  It will make your planning so much easier.  Enjoy!