Here is a tour of my kitchen drawers, plus lots of ideas for organizing kitchen drawers you can use in your own space!
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The kitchen is the hub of the home
Most people use theirs at least once a day, some households maybe 10 times a day! People gather in the kitchen. Family dinners and bonding happen. Homework and art projects are done here. The way you organize your kitchen can have a significant impact on the way you spend time in the space.
What you feel when you walk in the room likely affects your mood. This is especially true for me, as I have a hard time focusing on anything else if I know my kitchen is a cluttered mess. It’s also one of my favorite spaces to organize (in my house and other people’s). (Also check out how to declutter your kitchen cabinets.)
And as you probably know, our kitchen got a major overhaul in 2023! We have way more drawer space than we need – as planned! We have amazing deep and wide kitchen drawer storage and that was my number one request. I told our architect and cabinet maker “all the drawers, please.” I find drawers much easier to use than cabinets. There is less leaning down or reaching up, and with the whole top open, it’s easy to get things in and out. We probably have too many drawers now, which you’ll see with lots of open space in the photos of our kitchen drawers below.
Here we got with a kitchen drawer tour of our home and some ideas for organizing your own.
Ideas For Organizing Kitchen Drawers
Starting on the left side of our kitchen, in the “cooking zone,” we have the utensil and cookware drawers.
Utensil Drawer
This is our main kitchen utensils drawer that houses specialty items like whisks, a garlic press, thermometers, pizza cutters, measuring cups and spoons, tongs, and large serving spoons. In our previous kitchen these took over two drawers, but in this new kitchen one large drawer was the perfect size!
The drawer organizers in this drawer are mesh metal, which I have owned for years and years. While it was tempting to switch to bamboo (my favorite for drawers) I decided to be practical and use what I had. Luckily, they match nicely and fit well together! Our other main cooking utensils are in a pot on the countertop (spatulas, wooden spoons).
Cookware Drawers
Cookware drawers were one of my big requests for our new kitchen. They seem to be very popular these days because the cookware is so easy to reach. In the middle drawer we have our everyday pots and pans – a 2 quart sauce pan and 12″ frying pan by Demeyere and two nonstick Caraway minis. With the handles, they fit nicely inside with minimal crowding.
The lower of the two deep kitchen drawers houses our less-frequently-used but more heavy-duty pieces: a skillet and Blanc Creatives carbon steel frying pan and a Lodge cast iron skillet. We use these mostly for searing dinner foods, so they get the bottom drawer spot. Whenever we get a stainless steel stock pot, it will go down here too.
Knife Drawer
Moving over to the right of the range is our knife drawer. I am obsessed with this drawer!! We debated between re-installing our magnetic strip for knives or even going for a knife block, but I didn’t really like either option because all the knives were in view. A knife drawer seemed to be the obvious solution since we had so much great drawer space. I LOVE the knife organizers we purchased. While one can technically each fit all of our knives, having two keeps them all facing out and easier to grab. Oven mitts go in the middle (love these with the silicone tips).
Mixing Bowl Drawer
Welcome to bowl world. I LOVE our OXO stainless mixing bowls for everything from making meatballs to cookies to Hugh Jass salads (the middle one is my favorite salad bowl). They are so durable (I’ve had them for years and years). I also love having nesting mixing bowls of all sizes for when I’m cooking a recipe with a lot of steps or doing some meal prep. I will often use all the sizes in one recipe – the tiniest bowl for garlic and lemon juice and the big bowls for chopped potatoes or veggies. We also keep our measuring cups in here!
Lid Drawer
This lonely lid drawer needs some friends. Our previous cookware set had more lids, so we had a lid drawer before. We could actually just store the lids with the cookware, but I don’t like the extra step of removing it when getting out a pot, so we just keep them in here. Since we have the space, lid drawer stays for now!
Plate Drawer
Moving on to the island!! The top drawer is our plate drawer. When deciding where to put our plates, I knew I wanted them up top because we use them most often, so getting one out or unloading the dishwasher (behind me) could be done without bending over to open and close. We keep three sizes of plates in here: Pottery Barn classic coupe dinner plates, classic salad plates, and in the middle a set of tiny appetizer plates that everyone needs for things like a single cupcake or a few apple slices!
You might wonder if the plates slide around without any drawer dividers. They do just a tiny bit. But for the most part they don’t (unless you aggressively close the drawer) so for now we are going without a grid. A grid would be nice, but I’m always looking for ways to make do with what we have!
Bowl Drawer
Under the plates in a deep drawer are our bowls! We have some shallow pasta bowls (like these), handled bowls that we use for soups (like these) and deep cereal bowls (like these!). (Ours are from Pottery Barn but they are no longer sold from what I can tell.) I also have some KERF bowls that are smaller and perfect for yogurt, cereal, etc.
I love that this drawer is also easily accessible from the dishwasher (we go through a lot of bowls) and I can close the drawer with my thigh with a little nudge : )
Lunchbox Drawer
The bottom large drawer in our island is for lunchboxes. It’s looking very empty here because the kids had their lunchboxes with them at school when I took this photo! I put both the lunchbox inserts and the cloth outsides in here on the weekends. You can see we have a few extra lunchboxes, too.
You might know from Instagram that I also had all of our water bottles in here at one point. I bought a water bottle holder I got on Amazon to keep them from rolling left to right, but they were still shifting front to back rolling across the bottom of the drawer. But rather than buy a drawer divider system, I decided to just move them to the pantry. So now this drawer is lunchboxes only!
Silverware Drawer
Flipping around to the right of the dishwasher is our silverware drawer. I felt strongly that this be a single, smaller drawer literally right next to the dishwasher for easy unloading. Since our dishwasher has a tray on the top, that means there is zero bending over. (You can tell I feel strongly about my hatred for bending over when planning organization spaces, haha.)
I purchased this bamboo silverware holder last year that fits your drawer to size because it’s expandable. We have it situated front to back rather than side to side. And then acrylic containers from this set fill the back with different categories of pieces (mismatching KERF spoons, cheese knives, Birch size spoons).
Extra Cutlery Drawer
The next drawer down has overflow silverware in a second smaller bamboo organizer. This golden set is one I use on special occasions! We also have lids and chip clips in here.
Serving + Baking Drawer
The next drawer down is our serving and grill drawer. These are all pieces I use on holidays / dinner parties / or fancy occasions and not every day. Plus a few baking items for the KitchenAid and a rolling pin.
Wraps + Bags Drawer
Moving back to the island, we have four more stacked drawers that are organized by priority height. Wraps and baggies are on the top. I bought this bamboo set to decant baggies and LOVE IT! They are filled with these compostable baggies that I found at Target. We try not to use baggies when we can use a reusable glass container, but we do use them sometimes. You can see we don’t really use quart size right now, so that slot is empty, but I didn’t want to give it away!
Food Storage Drawer
Under the bags are our glass food storage containers. Still love them!!!! We have just two sizes – small and large. That simplifes things a lot! Most of our set was currently in use, but they stack neatly on top with lids above like so:
Stasher Bag Drawer
We love Stasher bags for bagels and breads or other things in the freezer, like our banana halves for smoothies. They get their own drawer for when not in use.
Kid Drawer
And the bottom drawer is the kiddo drawer for cups, bowls, and plates for Birch. He picked this drawer because he can easily reach it. We are probably almost phased out of it at this point, but he still uses most of these things currently.
Linens Drawer
This drawer houses our cleaning clothes, kitchen towel storage, and cloth and paper napkins. Nothing super special! Again I could use dividers, but there’s really no need since things tend to stay in place.
Junk Drawer
I love our junk drawer thanks to its giant size and these great acrylic containers that I’m always raving about for any drawer in your house! We have knick knacks that we use, lots of chargers, a phone cleaner, etc. Another big request of mine was to have an outlet inside the drawer – such a great way to hide clutter.
Beverage Drawer
The final stop on the drawer tour is our bev drawer under the coffee station. This drawer looks a bit messy due to the variety of categories inside, but it’s really all “drinks.” From koozies to spoons for stirring honey and coffee, to tea and wine openers. Everything we need for the coffee bar or drink fridge is right here. (Plus Thomas’s vitamins because he takes them in the a.m.!)
You can see all of my home organizing finds in my Amazon Storefront here!
How To Organize Kitchen Drawers
If your kitchen is feeling cluttered inside all of your drawers, check out this post for my three-step process: How To Organize Anything In Your House. I haven’t always had such a spacious kitchen, so there are some tips from my smaller spaces in the Home Neat Home archives.
Here are some tips for organizing the kitchen drawers specifically:
Step 1: Buy some organizing containers
This is a new-to-me method that I was sold on when Thomas’s aunt Layton came to help me organize our new walk-in pantry. Layton arrived with a car full of containers (with the tags still on) that we were able to mix and match like a puzzle until we found the perfect accessory for each item. When we were done, we returned the ones we didn’t use. I find this method so helpful when you’re trying to put together drawer organizers like a grid and aren’t quite sure what you need. The extra step to return what you don’t use is definitely a little extra time, but it makes organizing so much more fun!
For more kitchen organizing accessories, check out these posts: Kitchen Organization Accessories Favorites and Pantry Organization Bins.
Step 2: Take everything out of the drawers
When you’re ready to start organizing, take everything out. If doing it all at once isn’t possible, just do one drawer or category at a time. Once you see what’s out there (especially those of you with deep, dark holes for drawers) you’ll more easily be able to see what is necessary to stay and what can do. If you have three rolling pins, maybe you don’t need three?! (We do have three pizza cutters and we do use all three at times when one is cycling through the dishwasher!) Remember to be ruthless about what you keep, especially if you are short on space.
Step 3: Consider where and how you use things
On the countertop, visualize where things will go. Group like things with like and think about not only what you use together (plates together, silverware together) but also where in your kitchen you use it. It was extremely important to me that our everyday dishes and flatware be as close to the dishwasher as humanly possible. We put cooking things next to the stove and food storage things where we usually are wrapping up leftovers. Less used items go in the bottom drawers.
Step 4: Place things back in drawers using containers and dividers
Once you’ve made a plan, start to put things back. This is the fun part! Think about like with like but also the size and shape of things that might fit well in a drawer (like how our mixing bowls and measuring cups fit nicely together). If you weren’t able to buy new accessories, shop your home for tools to store things. I have long loved storing things in empty mason jars, baskets, or vintage boxes that I already owned.
