How to Organise Your Kitchen: The Ultimate Drawer Glow Up Guide
We need to talk about your kitchen drawers.
Because Life Is Too Short for Rummaging
Not the ones that look beautiful in a showroom photograph. The real ones. The ones you pull open seventeen times a day and quietly hope nobody ever opens when they come round for dinner. The one that has somehow become home to a dead battery, three takeaway menus from 2019, a mystery key, something sticky and a rubber band that has seen better days.
We all have one. Some of us have several. And if you have ever stood in your kitchen in the middle of cooking, desperately searching through a drawer for a peeler that definitely exists somewhere in there, you will know exactly the particular frustration we are talking about.
One of the most effective ways to organise your kitchen is to start with the drawers. Not the worktops, not the cupboards, not the fridge. The drawers. Because when your drawers work properly, everything else in the kitchen starts to feel more manageable. It does not require a renovation. It does not require a significant budget. It requires an afternoon, a bin bag and the willingness to be honest about what actually deserves a home in your kitchen.
Here is how to do it properly.
Organise Your Kitchen: Start With the Drawer That Haunts You
You know the one. Every kitchen has a junk drawer. The place where things go to disappear. Where you put something temporarily in 2022 and have not thought about it since. Where good intentions go to die.
Start here. Not because it is the most fun, but because clearing it will give you an immediate sense of achievement that will carry you through the rest of the process.
Take everything out. Every single thing. Put it on the kitchen table and look at it honestly. Be ruthless. If you have not used it in the past year, if you do not know what it is, if you have three of them and only ever need one, it goes. The mystery key goes. The ancient takeaway menus go. The dead batteries go in the recycling and the rubber bands can live in a small pot if you genuinely use them or go in the bin if you do not.
Once the drawer is empty, wipe it down. Then only put back what genuinely earns a place there. A small selection of everyday essentials. A notepad and pen. Scissors. A tape measure. The things you actually reach for regularly. Everything else finds a different home or leaves your house entirely. This one step alone will transform how you organise your kitchen and how it feels to use every single day.
The glow up tip: A simple drawer divider or a set of small boxes keeps even a utility drawer feeling calm and considered. You do not need anything expensive. A few small containers from any homeware store will do the job beautifully.
The Cutlery Drawer: Where Chaos Quietly Lives
The cutlery drawer is the one that looks organised until you actually open it. Then you find four forks wedged sideways, a serving spoon that belongs in a different section, seventeen teaspoons and approximately one tablespoon. How this happens in every kitchen in Britain is one of life's great mysteries.
Start by taking everything out and grouping it properly. Forks together. Knives together. Teaspoons, dessertspoons and tablespoons each in their own section. Be honest about how many you actually need. If you have thirty teaspoons for a household of four, some of them can go.
Now think about what else lives in your cutlery drawer that has no business being there. The corn on the cob holders. The mystery gadget you bought once and have not used since. The chopsticks you keep thinking you will use and absolutely will not. These things need a new home or they need to leave.
When you organise your kitchen drawers properly, the cutlery drawer is one that delivers the biggest daily return. A properly fitted cutlery tray that fills the width of the drawer makes an enormous difference. Not a small tray rattling around in a large drawer. One that fits the space properly and gives every item a clear, designated place.
The glow up tip: Measure your drawer before buying a cutlery tray. This sounds obvious and yet most people do not do it. A tray that fits the drawer properly is transformative. One that does not fit just creates a different kind of chaos.
The Utensil Drawer: Too Many Gadgets, Not Enough Space
Every kitchen has a utensil drawer that is essentially a graveyard for impulse purchases. The avocado slicer. The cherry pitter. The pasta measure. The garlic rocker that replaced the garlic press which replaced the original garlic press that worked perfectly fine. The apple corer that you bought specifically for one recipe and have never touched since.
This is the drawer that requires the most honest conversation with yourself when you organise your kitchen.
Take everything out and make two piles. The things you use regularly and the things you use occasionally or never. The regular pile goes back in the drawer. The occasional pile gets one final chance by moving to a less accessible storage spot. The never pile leaves your home.
The goal is a utensil drawer where everything is visible, everything is accessible and nothing requires excavation. Group similar items together. Keep the things you reach for most at the front. Give everything a logical place and then commit to putting it back there every single time.
The glow up tip: If your utensil drawer is genuinely overflowing, consider moving some items to a utensil pot on the worktop instead. The things you reach for multiple times a day, wooden spoons, spatulas, tongs, are often better served being accessible on the worktop than buried in a drawer.
The Baking Drawer: How to Organise Your Kitchen's Most Chaotic Corner
If you bake even occasionally, you probably have a drawer that has gradually accumulated baking paper, foil, cling film, piping bags, cupcake cases, icing nozzles and approximately forty-seven cake cases in a variety of sizes and colours that you bought for a specific occasion and cannot bring yourself to throw away.
This drawer needs a system. When you organise your kitchen baking drawer properly, roll items like baking paper, foil and cling film are best stored vertically in a deep drawer so you can see what you have at a glance without pulling everything out. Small items like cases, nozzles and piping bags benefit from being grouped in small pouches or zip lock bags so they do not scatter every time the drawer is opened.
Label everything if it helps you. Some people find labels deeply satisfying and genuinely useful. Others find them deeply unnecessary. Only you know which camp you fall into.
The glow up tip: A tension rod placed vertically inside a deep drawer keeps roll items like foil and baking paper standing upright and separated. It is one of those small kitchen organisation hacks that seems almost too simple to work and absolutely does.
The Everything Else Drawer: Making Peace With Reality
Some drawers simply serve as ‘everything else’ drawers. The tea towel drawer. The plastic bag drawer. The batteries and light bulbs drawer. The medicine drawer. These are not glamorous and they do not need to be. They just need to work. And when you take the time to properly organise your kitchen in its entirety, these drawers are often the ones that make the biggest difference to daily life.
The principle is the same for all of them. Take everything out. Edit ruthlessly. Group logically. Return only what genuinely belongs there and give everything a clear place within the drawer so it can actually be found when needed.
The plastic bag drawer in particular deserves special attention. If yours looks anything like the national average, it contains approximately one usable bag and forty-seven that have been scrunched into balls of varying sizes. Choose five or six good quality bags and fold them properly. Recycle the rest.
The glow up tip: Store plastic bags inside one larger bag so the drawer stays tidy instead of exploding every time it is opened. It takes thirty seconds and it works every time.
Why Organising Your Kitchen Matters More Than You Think
Here is the thing about kitchen drawers that most people do not realise until they experience the alternative. A disorganised drawer is not just an inconvenience. It is a source of daily low-level stress that accumulates over time in a way that is genuinely significant.
Every time you cannot find what you are looking for, every time you have to dig through a drawer to reach something at the back, every time you open a drawer and feel that small, quiet sense of chaos, your nervous system registers it. Multiply that by the number of times you open a kitchen drawer in a day and the number of days in a year and it adds up to something worth addressing.
When you organise your kitchen properly, even starting with just the drawers, you create a space that works for you rather than against you. An organised kitchen drawer is a small but genuine act of self care. It makes cooking easier. It makes mornings faster. It makes the kitchen feel calmer. And it costs almost nothing to achieve.
At James James Kitchens, we believe that a beautifully designed kitchen works as hard on the inside as it looks on the outside. If your kitchen is ready for more than just a drawer glow up, we would love to have that conversation.
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