Home Content // 3 Ways to Keep Holiday Clutter Out of The Kitchen*

Holiday baking is supposed to be fun, right?

But there’s nothing fun about the mess that inevitably ends up in the kitchen throughout the holiday season. No one enjoys a messy kitchen, so why let clutter take over?

Holiday clutter is bound to happen but you don’t have to let it overwhelm your kitchen. Here are three great methods for keeping the kitchen mess at bay.

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Clean Out the Refrigerator
It’s easy to overbuy food in the holidays, particularly if you’re shopping in a hurry. Often, we aren’t sure what we have at home in the refrigerator, so we simply buy more. Then we end up with too much.

One way to avoid this predicament that can lead to a cluttered refrigerator is to clean out any food inside before the season begins. Here’s an easy method to clean and organize this essential area of your kitchen:

Take everything out of the refrigerator. Everything!
Clean the inside while it’s empty. After all, when’s the last time it got a deep clean?
As you put the items back inside, check expiration dates.
Throw away any expired, old, or unwanted food.
Consolidate food as much as possible into small containers to make more space.

That’s it!

Simple Storage Solutions
Every kitchen is a little bit different. That means that the kind of mess that accumulates in each kitchen is different, too.

For some families with young children, toys wind up decorating the counters more than kitchen appliances. In homes with school-aged children, you might wind up with books, homework, and calculators laying around instead.

No matter what type of clutter seems to plague your kitchen, a simple solution using plastic storage bins and school name tags can solve the problem.

Use school name tags to place labels on each plastic bin (find them at StuckOnYou.uk). You can organize the bins in a number of ways:

One per family member
One per type of item that goes inside
One per day of the week

Your organizational system should be chosen based on how you hope to use these plastic bins.

Once you have these bins, you’ll find that it’s quick and easy to declutter your kitchen. Move out-of-place items off of the counter and into the bins. Problem solved!

Embrace Your Freezer
One of the biggest problems some families have while trying to keep their kitchen, pantry, and refrigerator organized throughout the holidays is leftovers. Yes, leftovers. Delicious as they may be, they can also cause a lot of unnecessary clutter.

Leftovers can accumulate on the counter and in the refrigerator, taking up precious space. Rather than waste this food or eat too much of it, portion out a few servings and freeze them.

By moving some items to the freezer, you’ll prevent your family from overeating while also decluttering the kitchen. It’s a win-win situation!