How are your kitchen cupboards organised? Mine need sorting.

[Trickymoments]

I'm sorting out my kitchen and would like some ideas for organising things better. It's quite a small kitchen although I have a couple of largish cupboards and one pull out cupboard.
I'm also finding I have hoards of rarely used stuff in there I.e spices, certain sauces, and cake making ingredients, icing, decorations etc. We just don't do that much baking but it's just built up from the occasions that we do as you can't seem to buy these things in just the quantity that you want for making one batch. As a result I have a whole cupboard being used to store this stuff which seems a bit of a waste of space.

Also, what do you do with snacks, crisps etc?I normally chuck them in the big pull out drawer but then find the dc's are constantly helping themselves & I don't always want them to. If I try & hide it up high my DS will climb up on the counter by the kettle to help himself.

Any tips or inspiration for how to organise it all better would be appreciated.

How are you storing the baking stuff? Is it just piled up? I bought tough plastic boxes for mine so they can be stacked, it makes use of the height of the cupboards without everything toppling out. Different sugars etc are in glass jars.
Lakeland is really good for kitchen storage, Hobbycraft has plastic boxes.

I have these add a shelf things from Lakeland which doubles your shelf space, turntable storage for jars, spices and baking stuff in a plastic box so you can just pull the whole thing out when you bake. Look at the Lakeland website - lots of good ideas on there.

The best thing I have done quite recently is go out and buy specific plastic storage tubs for things like pasta, rice, flour.
I got plastic and went out with a list of what I needed them for and height/width of cupboards.

I got plastic rather than glass because I wanted square ones that fit neatly/stack (and also less weight for my corner carousel). I got taller thin pouring ones for things like rice, porrage oats and flour.
They are big enough that I can fit an entire bag of the size I usually buy into a tub -so no more half empty packets that come open and spill. I empty the tub completely and then open a new packet and refill.
And things like couscous and polenta go into square tubs that stack (I checked the height so I can go two high and three across in one cupboard -yes I did take a tape measure to the shops and looked in various shops...and I knew eg how many litres a 500g packet of pudding rice was! (tubs are sold as litre size)
Before I had a mixture of glass jars - lots that would only take eg half a bag of flour and supposedly resealed packets. I do (should have) lots of cupboard space (you fit the space- I have things like a cat shaped cake tin I have never used taking up most of a shelf ) but my main problem was mess - spilled odd bits of macaroni/dusting of flour etc...they needed cleaning again within a week or so of being cleaned. Now they keep clean and are easier to clean. I can see what I have -what I need to buy/needs using up. And when I look at them I feel organised - pity I can't say the say for the rest of my house - or in fact life...

I did exactly what unlucky is describing, between Christmas and new year last year. Including the measuring your space, working out what sizes you need of each shape, what stacks etc. I took with me a 500g bag of sultanas, 1kg of flour, 1 kg of sugar etc to the shops and made sure that a whole bag would fit in, otherwise I'd have to store the remainder of the bag as well as the full tub.

I bought mostly in Lakeland but also in wilkos.

I also bought stickers that I could write on to label each tub, and clear sticky back plastic to put over the label so that they would stick long term.

It has really helped! It means that I know exactly how much of these things that I have left at a glance, s I'm not stockpiling. It also spurred me on to being a bit more organised in the rest of the house. I have a very long way to go, and little spare time, but I'm getting there.

I've started having regular culls of tins, packets etc either by chucking out or taking to the food bank.

Sorry to hijack but what would you suggest for a long deep cupboard? Stuff gets shoved further down and I don't remember it's there.

angela you could get something like this www.kitchenfittingsdirect.com/gb/shop/products?i=113372&c=6435&n=Chrome-baskets-soft-close-&gclid=CIP3v5CtgM8CFWgo0wodFKQFlw
or this from Ikea www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/80204673/
They should be easy to fit into existing cupboards - just depends on the width how easy they will be to find...

Those chrome baskets are the business, I have two base cupboards fitted out with them and they are jammed with stuff. Messy but accessible.

I have plastic boxes from Ikea etc inside them to sort of subdivide and so small stuff doesn't fall through. One box has all the cake icing stuff in for instance. (see VARIERA range)

You can also buy a back-of-door spice rack for a few quid from ebay if you have a suitable cupboard, you can always trim the shelf of a wall unit a bit to fit it in.

Another vote for storage containers. I stash ice lolly making stuff (sticks, moulds, and paper bags that I wrap them in) in a plastic tub and it is stashed in the utility. I batch make them so 24 at a time, decant from mould, wrap in paper sweet bag, into large labelled freezer bag. I have another container for homemade frozen yoghurt stuff, as I use disposable espresso cups with lids.

I had a new kitchen 3 years ago so all my cupboards have pull out drawers in the base units and larder units. I only have shelves in the wall cupboards which are for cups/glasses/tea/coffee/sugar/oil for cooking and baking stuff. But the baking stuff is divided into containers.

The drawers are stocked with items all in the same group. So pasta/rice/noodles in one, tinned stuff in another, drinks in another etc

Re crisps, my two eat different flavours so once their flavour is gone, it is gone so the greed of one child doesn't impact the other. They have to ask before they can have it but we have fairly regular eating times so they know when they can have a snack.

Unless you bake regularly, get rid of all the kit. A cake costs a pound or so, much less than the ingredients and fuel to make one at home.

Dont let the tv fat- off nonsense suck you in. Ive just got rid of all.my unused baking kit, loads of space now!