Organize Under Your Kitchen Sink

Everything Out ~
First you’re going to need some room to work, and you need to bring all that stuff out in daylight so that you can see exactly what you’ve got. (You may be surprised to see how much stuff you pushed towards the back of that cabinet!) Drag everything out onto the floor, so that you can take inventory.

Start Fresh ~
Now that you’ve got everything out of the cabinet, wipe down the inside of it. Clean out all the spills, and throw away leftover bits of paper towels or whatnot, that have been left underneath there. This job will be easier if you have some kind of smooth liner or tile underneath your cabinet. But often cabinets are simply wood pressboard on the bottom. I like to put a piece of vinyl flooring on the bottom of my kitchen cabinet to make it easy to wipe up any spills. You can pick up remnants of vinyl at your local home improvement store or ask for the castoff pieces of vinyl from anyone who’s recently redone their floor.

Toss The Old Stuff ~
Look at all the stuff you dragged out onto the floor. Check the expiration dates on them. And for the things that don’t have expiration dates, think about when you used them last. Anything that’s been in there for more than six months without being used can probably be thrown away.

Throw Away Unneeded Stuff ~
Look it what remains of the collection you pulled out onto the floor. Think about what you used recently and what you haven’t. Do you have bottles of cleaners that ‘looked like a good idea at the time’, or they were on sale when you bought them? But in the end, they were never really used. If you haven’t used it so far, or you haven’t used it and enjoyed it the way you expected to, go ahead and get rid of it. The idea is to pare down what you have underneath the sink to things that you really use.

Move The Non-Kitchen Stuff ~
Looking at the collection you have left, you may realize that some things are under your kitchen sink don’t belong there in there the first place. If you’ve got bathroom cleaner, it should go to the bathroom. If you’ve got garden tools, maybe they belong in the garage. Sometimes the kitchen cabinets simply end up as a catchall. Now that you are there, go ahead and move the items that really don’t belong in that room. Move them to the places where they do belong.

Organize With Caddies ~
Of the things that do belong under your sink, you probably noticed that you grouped them into a couple of categories. For instance, if you do keep your bathroom cleaning supplies underneath the kitchen sink with your kitchen supplies, there are some things that are clearly ‘bathroom things’ that you will be carrying back and forth. If you put them all in a little caddy, then you can pick up that caddy without having to go through the whole cabinet every time.

For instance, the caddy of things for your bathroom would be your rubber gloves, toilet brush, toilet cleanser; things you would probably not want to reuse in the kitchen. Meanwhile, a separate caddy for the kitchen might include extra sponges and things like oven cleaner. Separating your cleaning items into different caddies for different chores not only allows to grab just what you need all at once, it also helps avoid spills underneath the cabinet because if any cleansers do spill, they simply spill at the bottom of the caddy, which you can then clean out easily.

Once the area underneath your sink is orderly, you’ll find that you enjoy using those items more because you don’t dread having to search for what you need before you could even get started on that chore.

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