Organize Your Kitchen to Save Money

Want to love cooking in your kitchen? Then it’s time to organize it. Make it easy to cook and clean with these common sense kitchen organization tips.

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You want great meals. You want to save money cooking at home. But, it’s so hard. You know you can do it, but what’s getting in your way?

Chances are it may be stuff. Stuff gets in the way, specifically dishes, old catalogs, and canned veg that you haven’t put away yet.

I’ve written here on the blog about all the ways to save you money on food but for some reason, I’ve overlooked one of the most important aspects of meal prep: organizing the space you cook in!

We’ve all seen the pristine kitchens on social media and in movies, the ones where it’s beautiful but totally impractical. They are clearly not working kitchens.

Working kitchens get messy, that is true. But, managing your home includes keeping your kitchen items organized in such a way that they serve you, that makes it easy to cook and clean up, that saves you money.

If you’re spending so much time trying to find cooking utensils and ingredients, there’s no way that cooking will be fun. And if it’s not fun, you won’t do it. 

Make it easier on yourself and save money when you organize your kitchen.

How does kitchen organization save money?

You don’t overbuy. If you can easily find things in your kitchen, you are less likely to overbuy or purchase duplicates.

You don’t let things go to waste. When your kitchen is organized, you will be able to use things up before they go bad, avoiding food and money waste.

You will cook more often. If it’s easy to work in your kitchen, it will be easy to cook and clean up after. The easier it is to cook at home, the more you will do it. The more you do it, the more money you will save!

Cooking more at home while avoiding food waste and overbuying all work together to save you money, so it’s time to prioritize your kitchen organization.

What does an organized kitchen look like?

• You know what tools and ingredients you have.
• You store your ingredients and kitchen tools in such a way that it’s easy to find them.
• When you’re done cooking, it’s easy to clean because the cupboards and cabinets aren’t super jammed full of junk you don’t use. 

Common Sense Kitchen Organization Tips

Containers have limits. Remember that your kitchen is a container. It has limits. It cannot hold more than will fit in it, so you cannot buy more food or equipment than you can reasonably store. It’s fine to have separate long-term food storage in the basement or garage, but consider the possibility that you may have too much. It’s okay to downsize. Keep what you love and discard the rest.

Dejunk your kitchen on a regular basis. This means clearing out cupboards, drawers, and cabinets, and discarding what you don’t use so that the storage spaces are easy to access. Again, if you have more than you can store, you need to let some things go.

Move infrequently-used kitchen equipment to deep storage. That apple-peeler-corer-slicer that you love to use each fall? It doesn’t have to be in the middle of a cabinet you open every day. Move it to deep storage, but make a note of where it is so you can find it more easily.

Store items where you will use them. If you have a coffee station in one corner of your kitchen, store the mugs, sweetener, and other coffee paraphernalia in the same corner. The same goes for grilling items or baking ingredients and equipment.

Store like-with-like. Keep all mugs in the same cabinet and all plates in the same cupboard. This makes it easier to find and put away and also makes it easier to have kitchen help. (The exception to this would be special holiday dishes that only get used infrequently.)

Determine a baseline level of clean and keep to that standard. Many people tell me that they don’t cook because they don’t want to clean the kitchen. This means that they are paying for expensive restaurant food because of their stuff. Find your baseline level (which may involve a big dejunking session) and communicate it to everyone who uses the kitchen. A clean kitchen can save you money!

Label containers and shelves. This makes it easier for your helpers to keep to your baseline of clean, but it also helps you. Those visual cues come in handy when we’re stressed or in a hurry.

Good Reads on Kitchen Organization

• Kitchen Refresh: a planner to help you be your best in the kitchen – This is a book I self-published with my best tips and tricks for keeping your kitchen clean and organized.
• Kitchen Organization Tips and Secrets by Deniece Schofield – an old book but full of insightful strategies to keep things organized.
• The Waste-Free Kitchen Handbook by Dana Gunders – a great guide for how to store food so that it doesn’t go to waste.

Wanna go deeper? Join me in January!

The Great Redo of 2026

Next month, I’ll be tackling four key areas of my kitchen organization:

1. eating down the excess food (aka Pantry Challenge)
2. dejunking the kitchen
3. refining our grocery budget
4. resetting my meal prep strategies

Don’t miss a thing! Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter so you get all the details.

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