Organize Kitchen Pots and Pans
In this step-by-step tutorial, I’m showing you how to organize the pots and pans in your kitchen cabinets by using inexpensive pull-out drawers that I found at Aldi.
Remove everything in the kitchen cabinet.
Clean the space.
Install the pull-out pot drawer.
Organize according to weight and frequency used.
the before
When we first moved into our home a year ago, we just placed all of our kitchen pots and pans in the lower cabinet to the left of the stove. This was the closest space to the oven big enough to store our skillets and pans.
THE PROBLEM
After living with the space for a year, I realized that I don’t like stacking skillets on top of each other every day. It makes it hard to quickly grab the pan you need when you have to rearrange the whole stack to get the pan that you want to use.
My second biggest problem was that my cast iron pot was in the back of the cabinet, making it hard to reach. We use this pot frequently for soups and when I make sourdough. Since it is cast iron, the pot is so heavy that it is difficult for me to reach from the back of the cabinet.
Remove everything in the kitchen cabinet.
To properly measure how much space I have in a kitchen cabinet, I needed to completely empty each space.
Turns out this is a good time to inventory everything you have in the drawer and declutter.
Things I donated:
Duplicates
Old Teflon skillets that were scratched
Things I put in the basement:
Seasonal pots
2. Clean the space.
I vacuumed all of the random crumbs in the back of the cabinets and then wiped it down.
3. Install the pull-out pot drawer.
When we first moved, I went to the Container Store for a heavy-duty pot pull-out drawer and it cost $60! I knew that I would need more than one, so I decided to wait on the purchase.
Luckily, I found this identical heavy-duty kitchen cabinet pull-out drawer at Aldi for $30!
I was so shocked at the price that I bought three! Thank goodness I did. I save $90 by buying these Aldi sliding drawers.
The installation was super easy too!
The box provided me with multiple screws and I just needed a screwdriver to insert the screws into the lower kitchen cabinets.
I don’t think that our kitchen cabinets are made out of solid wood so it was pretty easy to do by myself. No help needed from my husband.
4. Place your heaviest items in the drawer.
The biggest problem I had with the pot and pan cabinet was that it was difficult for me to reach my cast iron soup pot. Since this was my biggest pain point, I decided to address this issue first.
I first placed my cast iron soup pot on the back of the pull-out drawer and then I placed smaller-sized pots on top. I only have three smaller pots so it’s easy to grab one. If I have more than that, it would be annoying to stack them all on top of each other.
Second, I added our steamer pot to the front of the drawer. We use this pot daily, to steam vegetables and make pasta or noodles.
To the right, I used a pot lid organizer flipped vertically to organize our skillets.
Organizing these pans vertically has helped me use the space efficiently and allowed me to reach in and grab the skillet that I needed quickly and easily.
On the top, I put the items that we use infrequently, such as our cast iron pans and our wok.
TIPS
Place your heaviest pot or pan on the roll-out drawer.
Use vertical space by flipping a pot lid organizer on its side.
Store the infrequently used items on the top shelf or in the basement.
more examples
In our kitchen island, we have two lower cabinets that were also chaotic.
On the left lower cabinet, we store our Ninja blender, mixer, Veggie Bullet and multiple sizes of strainers.
WHY?
I placed these kitchen appliances in the left cabinet because our sink is two feet to the left of the island and I wanted our kitchen strainers within easy reach. Also, our island only has one outlet on it and it’s on the left side of the island, so I put the appliances that would need electrical outlet closest to the outlet.
On the right lower island cabinet, I placed the instant pot on the pull-out drawer since this kitchen appliance is heavy and doesn’t fit on our pantry shelves. Again, I wanted it to be easy to reach to reach and pull out so I placed my heaviest item on the roll-out drawer.
To the right, I used a kitchen pan organizer to organize our cutting boards.
Our island is where we do the majority of our dinner prep and I wanted a cutting board to be within arms reach of the island and our knives.