I don’t know what it is about kitchens, but they tend to become the gathering place for every random object in my home with the counters and tabletops collecting clutter almost as soon as I clear them off. If your kitchen is like this, you might find cluttered countertops one of your biggest obstacles in preparing homemade meals. After all, who wants to spend time cleaning before they spend time cooking?

Learning how to declutter kitchen counters, cabinets and drawers can help set the tone for your your entire home. When we were renovating our former kitchen, I went through a deep purge and cleanse and took notes off the most helpful tips I learned along the way. That’s why I’ve put together these tips on how to declutter your kitchen to remove everything you don’t need, so the authentic character of the space can shine and be a place that you and your family enjoy being. I certainly plan to utilize these when we organize the new kitchen!

How To Declutter Kitchen

Decluttering your kitchen doesn’t have to be a difficult ordeal. Discover some simple and quick tips that will have you making the most of your space one more!

Get Rid of Mismatched Lids and Containers

If your kitchen is like mine was, you might have a drawer of containers without lids, and a bunch of lids without a matching container. Although it can be hard to part with these things (what if I find it?!), if the container no longer serves its purpose it’s time to get rid of it.

Extra lids can just be tossed, recycled, or used in art projects with the kids. But if you have lidless containers that you used to use for food storage consider repurposing them so you don’t feel wasteful. Old plastic food containers make a great addition to your kids’ toy kitchens, or holders for art supplies like pencils, water when painting, or markers.

Organize Cans in Your Pantry

Having a large food pantry is fantastic, but buying new canned food when you already have the same cans hidden at the back isn’t good for your storage space or your budget. Some simple pantry can organization is a great way to get space back while allowing you to see all the food you already have at a glance.

You can purchase can dispensers where you remove a can and a new one that rolls into place where the previous one was; however, simple dollar store baskets serve a similar purpose. Group your cans together using a system that makes sense to you, like all the cans of soup in one basket, and all the canned beans in another. This makes it easy to see at a glance what you have of a particular food group, and you can easily slide the whole basket out instead of sorting through individual cans to get to what you need.

Bonus tip: While you’re organizing your cans, purge your pantry of any expired or unwanted foods!

Decide What’s Countertop Worthy

Not every small appliance has to sit out on your counter. When there are too many objects taking up counter space it’s hard to have enough room to use your kitchen to cook meals. Instead, evaluate what’s out. If you use your coffee maker every morning, it probably deserves its place on your counter. But if you only use your electric kettle once every few months when a particular guest stops by it’s a good idea to tuck it away until you need it. This will help you maintain a clutter-free kitchen that looks neat and tidy.

Use Hooks to Hang Coffee Mugs

If there’s one thing that takes up a ton of room in my kitchen cabinets it’s coffee mugs, especially if you enjoy collecting them from special vacations! With the big handles, they use up available cupboard space. An easy solution for this is to take your mugs out of your kitchen cabinets. Install some simple hooks on the underside of your upper cabinets, or down an empty wall. Then, hang your coffee mugs on the hooks and voila, you have a ton more cabinet space!

Alternatively, if your kitchen cabinets are tall enough, you can install the hooks right inside the cabinet on the bottom of a shelf. This way you’re effectively dividing the cabinet in half with the mugs hanging from the top and smaller objects like plates stacked on the bottom.

Bonus Tip: Use hooks to hang your cutting boards, too, so you can get those off your counter and out of your kitchen drawers!

Tackle That Junk Drawer

Let’s be honest, every house has a junk drawer that is the resting spot of all the things that we don’t have a proper home for. We had TWO. Unfortunately, junk drawers quickly become cluttered and filled with things that don’t belong in the kitchen. It’s okay to have a kitchen drawer where you keep your twist ties, elastics, and a few spare pens but make sure that you label that as their home. If you can’t say, “This is the drawer where X goes” then it needs to find a real home somewhere else.

Remove Items You Don’t Need

Did you buy a deep fryer that you don’t use anymore now that you have an air fryer? Do you have 3 Bundt cake pans in your kitchen cupboards? If you have duplicates or items you don’t use, consider donating or selling them. This way you make room for the things you do need without giving up precious kitchen real estate to clutter you don’t use.

Invest in Drawer Organizers

Drawer organizers are a sanity saver. You can pick one up at the store or make one yourself if you’re feeling crafty and have a few old boxes lying around. The key to decluttering is making sure everything has a place to call home. Drawer organizers help sort the clutter in individual drawers, providing clear boundaries for where an item does — and doesn’t — belong. There is something so satisfying about each utensil having its place.

Organize Your Pots and Pans

Because of their size, clunky shape, and long handles pots and pans are going to take up a lot of room in your kitchen cabinets. There’s nothing worse than trying to grab a pan that’s at the very bottom of a stack of smaller pots, pans, and lids.

An easy tip to cut down on the clutter is to store the lids separately. Once the lids are out of the equation, you’ll find your pots and pans nest inside of each other a lot easier. You can get lid storage devices like this that attach to the inside of cupboard doors or ones like this that lay on the bottom of a kitchen drawer.

Another pot and pan storage solution is to use a wire pot rack to keep each pot or pan separate from the one beneath it. These allow you to keep the matching lid with the pot or pan while making it easy to grab just the one you need.

Get Your Water Bottles Neat and Tidy

One of the things that makes kitchens look cluttered is the amount of things your eye has to process on the counter. Lines of water bottles look untidy, unwieldy, and just an overall mess. Tuck water bottles inside of a kitchen cabinet with a door to reduce the amount of clutter your eye sees. If you don’t have enough cupboard space, consider investing in a water bottle storage rack that lets you lay the bottles on their side so they don’t take up as much room — or tip over the second you touch them like a line of dominos.

Clean Your Kitchen Countertops

After you’re done decluttering, give your kitchen counters a really good scrubbing. All of those extra appliances, tippy water bottles, and duplicate items may have been hiding a lot of grime and gunk. A good cleaning will get your counters looking spotless and ready for you to cook up your next meal!

Decluttering doesn’t have to take up a ton of your time and energy. Pick one area of your kitchen to focus on every day and before you know it you’ll have a clean, clutter-free kitchen that can act as the center of your home!