Kitchen Organization Hacks for Busy Chicagoans

Between work, family, and everything else Chicago throws at you, keeping your kitchen organized can feel like a full-time job. Whether you’re in a Lincoln Park high-rise or a Wicker Park walk-up, these practical organization tips will transform your kitchen from chaotic to calm—giving you more time to enjoy our beautiful city instead of wrestling with messy drawers.

Start With These Essential Pre-Organization Steps

Before diving into any kitchen organization project, grab a tape measure and take detailed notes on your cupboard and drawer dimensions. The height, depth, and width will determine what organizing solutions work best for your space. Remember: what works for your neighbor might not work for you, so stay open to trying new systems—even the ones that seem “extra” often become game-changers!

Transform Your Junk Drawer Into a Utility Hub

Let’s be honest—we all have that one drawer where everything mysterious ends up. Instead of a chaotic junk drawer, create a designated utility space using small rectangular containers to give every item a proper home. The key is removing everything first, cleaning the drawer thoroughly, then placing containers back in a layout that makes sense for your frequently used items. This simple system ensures nothing gets lost and everything has its place.

Pots and Pans Solutions That Actually Work

Deep drawers can be perfect for cookware organization, but what about those bulky pots that don’t fit? Consider getting professional home cleaning to help assess your space and recommend the best storage solutions. Adjustable pot and pan organizers prevent the dreaded lid explosion and keep everything accessible—no more digging through towers of cookware during dinner prep!

Conquer the Container Chaos

Organizing food containers is like the final boss of kitchen organization. Between mismatched lids and awkward shapes, it’s easy to understand why this area becomes so chaotic. The solution? Dedicated lid organization devices that keep everything streamlined and accessible. If you’re overwhelmed by the state of your container cupboard, consider booking deep cleaning help to start with a fresh slate.

Smart Utensil and Cutlery Organization

Ditch the countertop knife block and reclaim valuable workspace with bamboo drawer inserts that keep knives organized and protected. For utensils, tension drawer dividers create customizable sections that accommodate everything from slender tongs to bulky spatulas. The expandable bamboo cutlery organizer maximizes drawer space while keeping everything within easy reach—just remember to orient it with frequently used items at the front!

Pantry Organization Made Simple

Tall, deep pantry shelves often become black holes where food disappears until it’s years past expiration. Pull-out bins with wheels make everything accessible, while stacking pantry bins with drawers create uniform storage for awkwardly shaped packages. Airtight locking containers are perfect for baking supplies and keep ingredients fresh while preventing the inevitable flour explosion. Sometimes the best solution is to schedule a cleaning and organization session to tackle this overwhelming project.

The Magic of Lazy Susans

Don’t let the name fool you—Lazy Susans are hardworking organization heroes. While they do require sacrificing some square footage, the ability to spin and access everything instantly makes them perfect for spices, condiments, and other small items that get lost in deep cupboards. If you’re constantly forgetting about items in the back, give Susan a try!

Kitchen Upgrades That Make Life Easier

Beyond organization, several upgrades can transform your kitchen experience. Robot vacuums and mops handle day-to-day maintenance, while soft-close hinges eliminate noisy slamming. Label makers help everyone in the household know where items belong, and a quality runner adds comfort and style while protecting your floors. When you’re ready to get your space cleaned and organized, these finishing touches make maintenance much easier.

Maintaining Your Organized Kitchen

Once you’ve implemented these organization systems, regular maintenance becomes much simpler. The key is having a designated spot for everything and sticking to the system. If life gets busy and things start to slip, don’t hesitate to book an appointment with a trusted Chicago cleaning company to help you reset. Many Chicago residents rely on fast cleaning services to maintain their organized spaces between major cleanings.

Whether you’re looking to completely reorganize or just tackle one problem area at a time, these solutions can help you create a kitchen that works for your lifestyle. And if you need someone to clean my apartment after your organization project, Chicago has excellent resources to help you maintain your newly organized space.

I recently moved into a new home, as you probably know by now, and that means that I had to set up an entirely new kitchen. Now, every kitchen comes with pros and cons, unless, of course, you have a half a million dollar budget and you’re building your dream kitchen, you’ve got to deal with what you’ve been given. And I had a pretty decent space to start with, but I still had to come up with good organization strategies so that I can make this kitchen work for me and my 7-year-old daughter. So, in this video, I’m going to walk you through how specifically I organized my kitchen. What’s under the hood or inside the cupboards and drawers in this case, kind of how I organize some of those more awkward spaces, more difficult spaces, and awkward and difficult items. And my goal is to show you how to optimize your kitchen space. Whether you’re moving into a new home or planning to reorganize your kitchen, either in a small part or a large part, I just want you to feel motivated and inspired. Now, a little bit of advice before you get started is to get a tape measure and take notes on the measurements of each of the cupboards and drawers that you are planning to reorganize because the height, the depth, the width is going to make all the difference in terms of what organizing tools and strategies you use. The other thing to know is that what works for me isn’t necessarily going to work for you or work for your next door neighbor. Everybody is different. And I’ll also say this, the things that I thought were too extra for me have actually ended up being the most helpful. So, just keep an open mind. And just a quick reminder, if you haven’t done so already to subscribe to the Clean MySpace channel and give this video a thumbs up if you’re excited to see some organizing content. Let’s start off with the junk drawer. Now, everyone calls it the junk drawer, which is why I’m calling it the junk drawer, but I have renamed mine the utility drawer because, as you’ll see when I open it up, it’s only got useful things in there. If it’s junk, it goes in the garbage. If it’s useful to me in some way, shape, or form, it goes in the utility drawer. Now, this is an example of one of those things that I thought was extra, but has actually made a big difference. I got these little containers, these little rectangular and square containers that I have used to space out and organize my utility drawer. And what this does is it gives everything a place. Anything in there has a home. In fact, I have some open slots for some new things that might make their way into the utility drawer as time goes on. But what I love about this is that there’s nothing in there that I don’t need and there’s nothing in there that doesn’t belong. If you want to organize your junk drawer, the first thing I recommend is to remove absolutely everything from there. Clean out the drawer, get these containers, and then decide what it is that you need and place the containers back according to the layout that makes sense for your drawer and for what you need. Hence, the utility drawer. So, in this house, I have a deep drawer that I’m able to use for pots and pans. Now, not all of my pots fit into this drawer. So, I have a cupboard that I have designated for my heavier stuff, my cast iron stuff. If I didn’t have this, I would get a pots and pans organizer because I must tell you, pots and pans, much like containers, which I’ll be covering shortly, can get completely out of control. Lids don’t have pots. Pots don’t have lids. Lids fly out everywhere. We don’t know how to stack things. It gets out of control. This little organizational device solves everything. And it’s adjustable. On the topic of containers, can we just all agree that organizing containers as a kitchen is like the final boss organization job? It’s like after you’ve gotten to the last level in the video game, organizing the container drawer is like the final boss job that you need to do. That container, drawer, or cupboard just gets so out of control. Lids, containers fly out, you put one in there, you shove that door closed. You don’t know what’s going to happen the next time you open it. It gets crazy in there. So, we need a good system. And I find because containers are different shapes and sizes and brands and materials, it can get really complicated really quickly. You can stack them, you can organize them, you can figure out what works for you. If you have a lot of plastic container lids, which if you have any containers, you will. There are lid organization devices that you can get, which again sounds extra, sounds bougie, but at the end of the day, if you’re struggling with keeping this organized, these keep your lids organized and streamlined. And that space that used to be chaotic is no longer chaotic. So, have a look at it and see if it makes sense for you. I haven’t had a knife block on my counter in many years. I find them to be a bit of an eyesore and they also take up valuable space. And when you look at a kitchen these days, it’s sort of out of fashion to have a knife lock on the kitchen counter. So, I had quite a large, let’s call it utensil drawer to the right of my stove. And what I did was I found a bamboo drawer insert knife block and it solves a big problem. You want to make sure that your knives can be organized and safely laid out and the blades protected. And you want to do it in a way that doesn’t take up a ton of space. What’s cool about these is they slide right into your drawer. And if you are someone that has stake knives, like a set of four or eight steak knives, you can get two of these or you can get a larger one. But I like this one because it’s got space for both large knives like chef’s knives and then smaller knives like pairing knives. Organizing your utensils can be another big challenge, and there are tons of ways that you can do this. Just look online and look up kitchen utensil organizer and you’ll see everything from countertop jars to, you know, special drawer inserts and everything in between. Now, like I said, I have quite a large drawer for my utensils and I didn’t just want to have everything lying around sort of free flowing in there cuz again, I can’t handle that kind of chaos. I will let it get out of control very quickly and I won’t do anything about it. So, I needed to like pre-manage that situation. And the way that I did that was I got these tension drawer dividers. These ones are bamboo, so they kind of matchy matchy with the knife block that’s already in there. And what I like about these is I can move them around to wherever makes sense. So where all of my tongs are might need a bit more of a narrow space, whereas where some of the larger stuff, like where the spatulas are or the lemon squeezer, needs a little bit more space. I can customize exactly how much width I want each section to take up. And this has been a really great solution. It’s low tech and it is so easy to implement. Next up, I’ve got this bamboo cutlery drawer organizer. The reason I like this is because it is expandable. So depending on the size of the drawer that you have, it can either crunch up to the smallest size or you can widen it out to something that’s really large. and it gives you an absolute maximization of that drawer space. Now, the reason I like bamboo over plastic is because it’s a little bit more elevated. It’s also very easy to clean and it’s very durable. I also learned a little trick from my mom. Okay, I used to have my cutlery tray oriented in such a way where the spoons were at the top. So, if I wanted to get to them, I have to pull the drawer all the way out and reach my hand far in there. My mom just said, “Why don’t you reorient it and have the spoons at the front?” It was such a simple fix, but it solved a problem that I had and I never really thought about fixing. So, if you have one of these cutlery trays, consider reorienting them and having these two horizontal sections facing you. Thanks, Mom. In my old house, we had a pantry that had very tall and deep storage sections. So, you couldn’t exactly use all of it functionally because you would just forget about all the stuff in the back. And then the next thing you know, you have a can of cream corn from 2019 and you’re like, where did that come from? And you just see money sitting there collecting dust. And no matter how conscious or conscientious you think you are about the stuff that you have parked in your pantry, it’s easy to forget. So, I really like these pantry pull out bins. And what’s cool about these is they’re tall, they’re deep, and they have little wheels so you can easily roll them out and push them back in. Now, I’ve also used these in some pantry pull out drawers that I have to help me better organize things like pasta and olive oil, different oils, vinegars. I’ve just found this to be particularly useful. I also use it to organize some snacks that I have for Riley. What I like about these is they come in so many different shapes and sizes. You can find ways to make them make sense in your pantry. And on that note, something else that you might want to look at are these stacking pantry bins. What’s cool about these is, of course, they can stack one on top of the other depending on the height of the pantry that you have. And they come with little drawers. Now, the reason I think this is great is because when you have something, you know, a pantry item, packaged snacks, spices, cans of fish, or something along those lines, packages can be awkwardly shaped or different shapes, and they don’t always stack up neatly. Whereas, if you have these uniform shaped boxes and bins where you can dump items in and then pull out the drawers, you have this very organized, streamlined space, and it all of a sudden becomes much easier to use and access what’s in the pantry. And you can also get a quick visual on what you need more of. Another staple for pantry organization are airtight locking lid storage containers. The reason I like these ones, these ones are Rubbermaid, brilliant, is because they give glass, but they’re actually plastic, BPA free, safe, all of the things. I hand wash these when I get them. I’ll hand wash them once I run out of product. But what I like about them is they have a really durable and thick seal, and the lid clicks down, so your food is airtight. It’s stored effectively, and you can see exactly what’s in there. Plus, they’re all the same base shape, so they’re very easy to stack regardless of the size that you use, unless of course you have those little mini ones. But then you can sort of double layer them. I really like these specifically in the baking area of my pantry. I’ve just decanted all of the stuff like sugar and flour. All the stuff that basically explodes out of a package and makes a mess, I’ve put in here. I’m not doing this to everything, but I do think for uh baking supplies specifically, this has made a huge difference. Lazy Susans are not lazy. They are hardworking. But let me tell you, it took me a minute to get comfortable with the idea of giving up space to use a lazy Susan. I mean, if you think about it, you put one in and you’re losing like a square size of space because of the entire radius of Susan herself. But what you gain is the ability to spin it around and see anything that you need at any given time. So I didn’t have a spice drawer, let’s say, and I didn’t want to put my spices in a cupboard just as is because I would never be able to find the stuff at the back. So instead, I measured out the maximum depth I had in a cupboard. I got a lazy Susan to meet that. I ended up using three of them and that’s what I use to organize my spices. At first I was annoyed because I look at my cupboard and I’m like gh so much space is taken up. But I have to say since living in this house and cooking and using the kitchen, the lazy susan like the three lazy susans that I have for my spices have been fantastic. So, if you’re struggling to organize a space in your kitchen where you’re constantly forgetting about things in the back, take a risk. Give Susan a try. Now, some other essentials that I have in my kitchen that I think have made a difference either in making this a more functional space or a more, let’s call it, luxurious space. I’m going to share those with you right now. First up, a vacuum robot and mop. Well, I think you know me well enough to know that I don’t like cleaning. I’m lazy by nature. So, if a robot can do even one thing for me, I am happy to give that robot a try. So, I have been using a robot vacuum and mop in the house. I’ve been testing it out and I’ve actually been pretty happy with it. We are still spending time getting to know one another. And this isn’t taking away from the fact that I have to do regular vacuuming and regular mopping when I need a more heavyduty job done. But for the day-to-day maintenance, like my daughter and her friend were here yesterday, they ate popcorn, they were making a mess, and then I just sent the robot off to do its work, it makes a difference. So that is definitely a nice little step up in the world. Next up, soft closed hinges for your cupboard doors and your drawers. I have not always had these in my kitchen. And what’s funny is half the kitchen has soft closed hinges and half does not only that. I don’t get it. But anyway, half the time I’m opening cupboards and slamming them because I forget which ones have it and which ones don’t and it’s like jump scare. And then the other time I try to go gentle but it’s already a nice soft gentle close. So, at some point, I’m going to finish updating all of the hinges in here so that they’re soft closed and they don’t give me a minor panic attack anytime I try to do any work in the kitchen. I hate to admit how much I like my label maker because I never thought that I would be the label maker type, but I really like my label maker. So, in the kitchen, I have used it to label out different sort of pantry areas so that not only I know where things go. Uh, so that Riley, my daughter, knows where things go and so that any friends or family who come and look for something in the kitchen know where to find things. And I have found that it helps like cuz I have a deliberate spot for everything. So, again, as much as I don’t want to admit that it works, it does. I also want to shout out the runner in this kitchen. I chose this really nice kind of red orange with hints of blue and green oriental style runner. I really like it. And what I did was I just measured the length of the workspace in the kitchen and that is how I chose which type of runner to order. The nice thing about a runner is it can bring color into your kitchen without you necessarily having to spend a ton of money. It also serves a really great function like if you’re working at the sink or unloading the dishwasher. It kind of absorbs that moisture, you know, so you’re not like slipping and sliding on the kitchen floor. Gives you a little bit of comfort when you’re doing any work in the kitchen. And the one that I got is machine washable. So if at any time it gets disgusting, and trust me, that time comes, uh, you can just throw it in the washing machine. All right, you have lots of different ways that you can tackle organizing your kitchen. And I hope by me showing you how I’ve done it in my new space, it’s given you some ideas for what you can do at home. And that brings me to this week’s comment question, which is, what is the oldest thing that you have found in your kitchen when you have been tiding it out? Is it grandma’s old container of nutmeg from 1987 that you found in your spice drawer? Is it an old, you know, bag of chips that expired 16 years ago? Let me know in the comments down below. I One of the cool things that happened when I moved into this house is that I was able to again call all of the stuff that I brought over. So, the pantry items, uh, I was very deliberate about. And I really try to keep minimal stuff on hand because I hate I just hear my mom don’t waste food on my shoulder. So I hate wasting food. Uh and yeah, I just don’t want to deal with that, you know, negative tape that I have running in my head. But let me know in the comments down below if you want to constantly stay in the loop with what we are doing here at Clean MySpace. Of course, you can follow us on Instagram, you can follow me on Instagram, and you can subscribe to our newsletter, which is called The Dirty Dish. and we’ve got a link for that down below. So, now that you know how to organize your kitchen, you might be wondering how to clean your kitchen. And this is a video I did all about cleaning your way to a stress-free kitchen, something we could all use. If you haven’t done so already, make sure that you subscribe to the Clean MySpace channel. Thanks so much for watching and we’ll see you next time.