New kitchen - getting organised

[Daisybell1]

I'm very lucky to be doing some house remodelling and am getting a kitchen/family room. I'm hoping this is my opportunity to get organised and make the house run a bit smoother.

I need to be thinking about what will make my life easier - timers on appliances etc (do people use these?), timer for slow cooker - will this stop everything going dry?

Are there any other tips people have?

I'm close to having a kitchen design, but I haven't thought about what goes IN the cupboards - what do I need to help with being organised?

Thank you!

I did this last year. I had 2 large walk-in cupboards with shelves along both sides, one for a pantry, the other for saucepans, casseroles, kitchen equipment.... and it means no more grovelling at the back of cupboards and it helped no end with getting rid of what I didn't need as the rarely used stuff gravitated to the high shelves, either because it WAS rarely used (preserving pan) or because I never wanted to use it (1960s coffee percolator anyone?). Therefore no wall cupboards needed.

For stuff around the kitchen the golden rule is to store it where you need it, so kettle, coffee, tea, mugs etc all together, and not too far from cereal, bread, marmalade, milk ... walk through the things you do most in your kitchen and see where everything needs to be.

NB if you decide after a few weeks to change stuff around be warned - your DH may never be able to find things again. Mine is still looking for bowls where they lived for the first couple of weeks, not where they have been for the last 8 months!

Enjoy your new kitchen!

This doesn't really have to do with organization, but will save you some space and a LOT of bad smells, esp. in warm weather....

In-Sink-Erator - expensive, but worth every penny. It 'eats' all the food scraps and can be connected to your dishwasher as well. Brilliant! We've had ours for two years, my parents - for five. We both absolutely love it.

It doesn't take up that much space under your sink, is fairly easy to install (plumbing and electric socket), and becomes one of those 'favourite' appliances.

And the added bonus is that you never have to worry about putting your rubbish out at night for the fear of it being 'attacked' by foxes and birds :)

Thank you both.

Honu - I've spent the evening labelling cupboards on the plan and now have a tea station and also a toaster station. I also have a phobia of wall cupboards but I've been persuaded to have some

Elk - I haven't looked at those - I'll give it some thought (and see if the budget will stretch!)

Have everything under the worktop as drawers, that way there's no scrabbling around fishing things out.

Induction hobs are brilliant. So easy to clean and some have timers s ou can program things to cook for however long then switch off.

A Quooker, I would love a quooker. We had one at work and at first I thought oh fgs lazy people can't even be bothered to boil a kettle but its fab.

Timers are good, very complicated to set up for some reason but good.

If you have spotlights buy LED ones, they use 90% less electric than normal halogens. If its a family room you will have the lights from 4pm in the winter and the price of electrics not going down anytime soon.

Thank you!

I have 2 stacks of drawers on the design but have just realised (when baking a cake) I'm going to need another set near the oven

I'd love a hob with a timer - especially for when I have to dash to do the nursery pickup and can set the pasta to cook

The best bit about induction hobs is you get to buy new stainless steel saucepans too.

It's win-win.