Martha Stewart's Top Tips For A More Organized Kitchen

Martha Stewart is a domestic goddess icon. She is best known for her unparalleled skills when it comes to being the ideal hostess, and that includes serving up deliciously prepared dishes in a beautifully organized kitchen. While many of us can only hope to reach the near-perfect level of hostessing and home chef skills that Stewart exemplifies, organizing our kitchens with some of her top tips is definitely achievable.

When your kitchen is organized just right, it makes every other task you complete in the room not only easier, but more efficient, as well. Not to mention, an organized kitchen is also more fun to spend time in. Who wants to spend all their time in a cluttered, disorganized space? No one, that's who. Thankfully, Martha Stewart is a pro at kitchen organization, and she loves sharing her tips in countless videos online. We rounded up some of her best so you can take advantage of Stewart's wealth of organization skills and apply them to your very own home kitchen. Once you do, who knows? Maybe the rest will fall into place, and you'll be wowing everyone with your Stewart-esque hostessing and cooking skills from start to finish.

Whether you are in need of extra cabinet space or not, Martha Stewart recommends hanging your pots and frying pans from a rack above your stove. Not only does it work as a fantastic organizational tactic, but it also keeps your collection of cookware clean and looking great. You won't have to worry about scratches caused by stacking, and for those of us with a nice set of cookware, displaying them for all to see is a great way to show them off.

In addition to organization and cleanliness, Stewart loves storing pots and pans above the stove because it makes using them incredibly efficient. The easy access positioning means all you have to do is reach up and grab whatever pan you need at the moment. If you don't have space directly above your stove for a hanging rack, you can also use another area, perhaps over an island, but keeping them as close to the stove as possible is still ideal. Either way, this is one organizational tip from Stewart that comes with a broad range of benefits, so don't sleep on it. Plus, just think of what you will be able to do with all of the extra cabinet space.

When it comes to the bare basics, you really only need three different types of kitchen knives — a chef's knife, a paring knife, and a serrated knife. However, bulking up your kitchen knife collection to include a complete set is a surefire way to take your cooking to the next level. Just ask Martha Stewart; she loves her collection of knives. She also has a great tip for keeping them organized: Create a designated knife drawer in your kitchen. Many knife sets come with a block to stick them in, but creating a drawer for them instead makes them much easier to see. Just open the drawer and there they are, no need to keep extracting based on the handle size alone, only to find it's the wrong knife. You better believe she doesn't mean just tossing them straight into a drawer, either.

Stewart sets a handy cork liner with knife slots inside her kitchen drawer to keep them all aligned and organized, but you can find wooden and plastic ones for sale, as well. Whatever you choose, she recommends organizing them from smallest to largest. This makes extracting the correct one as effortless as possible.

When organizing a kitchen, many people don't put too much thought into the pantry. After all, what you keep inside is always changing, so it's easy to just unload groceries and move along. However, Martha Stewart offers a great tip to help ensure your pantry not only stays organized, but keeps food fresher for longer as well: Transfer dry goods that come in plastic bags into airtight containers.

Stewart calls this organization tip decanting, but it's not nearly as involved as that sounds. Really, it just means pouring bags of things like rice or dried beans into a large airtight container with a snug lid. She likes that it keeps pastry goods fresh while also upping the aesthetic factor. She also loves being able to see everything in the pantry at once because it makes things easier to find, and you will, too. Of course, these containers are reusable too, so feel free to wash them out and use them for other dry goods when needed.

You don't have to stop with items that are in a bag, either. Pantry goods that come in boxes, like pasta, cereal, breadcrumbs, and more, also benefit from this "decanting" method. As you probably guessed, it makes them easier to see and looks super organized.

Martha Stewart wouldn't stand for unorganized kitchen drawers, and neither should you. While most people have an organizing tray for their silverware at the very least, Stewart likes to keep these types of trays and dividers in all of her drawers. They create specific areas for all of your kitchen tools and utensils, ensuring they are easy to find when the time comes. If you've ever dug through a drawer full of random utensils for longer than a couple of seconds, you know how beneficial this could be. Ugh, like, where is the wine key?

Even your junk drawer can be organized. You should see Stewart's. She likes to line the junk drawer with sheet metal to keep the base of it protected when you toss items back in. This may seem a bit extra, but she says it's super easy to just measure the drawer and have a sheet metal purveyor cut you a piece that fits perfectly. Whether you take it to this level or not — and this goes for every drawer in your kitchen, not just the junk one — placing small bins inside to contain like items is the way to go. This means keeping baking tools in one bin, drinking utensils like straws in another, and so forth. When the bins are fitted into your drawers properly, they keep everything aligned, easy to see, and even simpler to use.

Another one of Martha Stewart's fantastic kitchen organization tips involves storing like items, or items you use in tandem together. For example, she recommends storing all of your baking tools in one cabinet, or at the very least in one succinct area. This includes everything from your mixer to baking trays and beyond. The same goes for knives and cutting boards. When stored in close proximity, it streamlines usage, making things more efficient and enjoyable to utilize along the way.

Stewart also likes to keep her coffee maker and mugs in the same space, and we all know keeping things simple when it comes to your morning caffeine fix is a win. You can also create a zone for all of your cleaning supplies to ensure they are readily available when a mess occurs. After conquering these Stewart-recommended areas, keep the same frame of mind when considering other items in your kitchen and how they work well together. After all, all of our kitchens are a little different. Some of us may need an area for beverages and bar tools, others not so much. Design your groupings to best fit your needs, and you'll ensure everything is as efficient and organized as possible.

In addition to grouping items together, Martha Stewart recommends keeping them close to the areas where you use them most. It sounds simple, but you wouldn't believe how much time and effort this can save you when it comes to utilizing your kitchen. Everything from the most menial tasks to the most involved cooking endeavors becomes simpler and quicker when you create workable zones in your kitchen.

How you use items in your kitchen depends a bit on the layout and the type of cooking you do, so organizing will come down to a few specifics. However, Stewart gives a couple of examples of keeping items close to the areas where you use them most that can benefit just about anyone. For starters, she likes to keep pots and pans near the stove. If you remember, her preferred method is hanging them on a rack above the range, but even if you opt for a cabinet, keeping them close to the stove will serve you best. She also recommends storing mixing bowls near the counter you plan on using most for food preparation. Lastly, she likes to keep essential cooking tools, like spatulas and large spoons, within arm's reach of the stove, so they are ready and available when needed. This could be on the counter or in a drawer, so long as they are within arm's reach, you'll reap the benefits.

Storing baking trays and pans in some kind of organized fashion isn't the most straightforward task. They are large, often pretty flat, and many of us have quite a few in our kitchens. So, do you put them in a drawer or a cabinet? Or maybe in the broiler under the stove? Well, Martha Stewart recommends utilizing handy tray dividers to get the job done, and she's definitely on to something here. Tray dividers allow you to utilize lots of vertical storage space in larger cabinets (which is often underutilized) and also make it easy to see every single pan and tray you have with a single glance. You'll never have to dig through a stack of them ever again.

Stewart notes that two types of pan and tray dividers work wonders for organization: stationary ones and pull-out ones. Obviously, the ability to pull all of your pans out to sort through them sounds incredible, but if you aren't in the mood for a complete installation, or maybe you are renting, stationary tray dividers work exceptionally well, too. You can find them everywhere, and they are pretty inexpensive as well. Just make sure to measure the cabinet you intend to keep your pans and trays in, and determine how many slots you need before making a purchase, and you should be good to go.

Martha Stewart improves lots of her dishes with a secret ingredient, because often, all it takes is a simple upgrade to take things from everyday to exceptional. This next organizational tip follows the same trend. You know those extra-large corner cabinets found in kitchens? Well, they can be challenging to organize because of the unusual, typically deep space, but Stewart has a simple one-step solution: Install lazy Susans in your corner cabinets. Her signature custom kitchens often come with these (more on that later), but we can easily implement the same idea in our own kitchens.

You don't have to necessarily gut a corner cabinet and opt for a complete installation of multi-level lazy Susans, either. Simply buying one for each level of your corner cabinet and placing one on each shelf is totally acceptable, especially if you are able to track down lazy Susans that fit your cabinet pretty precisely and feature a non-slip ring on the base. Either way, the addition of lazy Susans helps you maximize space while simultaneously making it easier to extract and find everything you store inside. Winning!

Another pro organization tip brought to us by Martha Stewart involves storing your most used kitchen items at eye level and reserving higher storage spaces for items you don't use as frequently. When you do, it reduces the time needed to do everyday tasks. After all, you don't want to get out a step stool to reach a higher cabinet or shelf to access an item you use every day. That space should be reserved for things that don't get nearly as much attention.

For Stewart, her most used kitchen tools would include the things she uses for green juice — she makes and drinks it every day. The same can't be said for most of us, though, so you'll have to consider your own kitchen needs. Are coffee and tea mugs commonly used items in your kitchen? Or, do your rocks and wine glasses get more play? The same tactic should be used for your dishware, as well. Often, this means keeping plates and smaller bowls at eye level and storing larger serving dishes up high. However, again, what we use most in our kitchens is pretty subjective. Put some thought into your particular habits, adjust accordingly, and you'll be amazed at how useful this Stewart tip can be.

There are a couple of things you can do to revamp your kitchen on a budget, like replacing the cabinet fixtures or giving it a fresh coat of paint, but sometimes you just need to start from scratch. Enter, Martha Stewart. This probably comes as no surprise to many of us, but she curated her own line of Martha Stewart Living kitchen cabinets that are sold at Home Depot, and they are designed with organization and functionality at the forefront. So, if you are on the market for a complete kitchen renovation, her line of kitchen cabinets makes organizing your dream space as easy as possible.

The Martha Stewart Living line of kitchen cabinets was designed with help from the domestic goddess herself, and she made sure to include a slew of organizational features that are pretty much guaranteed to make using your space easier. They'll definitely assist in helping you keep it up to her standard of organization as well. That sounds like a tall order, but it's true. Some of the special features she's proud of in various kitchen cabinet layouts include things like deep scoop drawers, pull-out cabinets for spices and food canisters, tall pantry cabinets, pet food centers, and the list goes on. This final Martha Stewart kitchen organization tip isn't for everyone, but oh man, if you can swing it, it's sure to be a game changer.