Want To Organize Your Dishes And Tableware Once For All?
The Moment I Realized My Tableware Closet Was A Mess
The one question I get asked more than any other is where I store all my dishes. For the longest time, that was an easy answer, as everything was well organized. But over time, even my systems has broken down. I didn’t realized it since I had to pack for a moving. If I showed you what was behind those doors, you wouldn’t find it very nice or helpful.
Here’s how to transform your dining room storage and finally get it organized for easy access (and this is exactly what I did to organize my new kitchen and dining closet!
First Step: Emptying The Cabinets
I begin all organizing projects by taking everything out. However, if you have too many dishes and tableware to unload and look at it all at one time, simply start by emptying one cabinet at the time.
I suggest to place everything on the dining table or on the floor, as you need to understand how many pieces you have of the same category in order to determine how much spaces needed to house it.
As well, this will help you to decide what to keep and what is unnecessary. it’s incredible how much stuff I bought without realizing I already had very similar one, or how much I kept without using it for years.
Divide Everything Into Categories
To do this, you have to determine what defined a category. You have to decide how you want to divide them: Would all plates go together? Or would dinner sets be isolated by pattern. Would salad plates be stored with dinner plates? Or would dishes be divided by size, color, occasion or formality?
I find very helpful to keep the dinner sets together and divide the rest of the stuff by occasion: (casual and formal) and color: This will help you to store and match all the crockery you collected during the years.
How Many Sets Should I Keep
Depends on many different factors that you should consider when deciding how many dishes your household needs.
Answering these questions will help you find the balance between too many and too few.
- How many sets do you currently have? How many place settings do you have for each of those sets?
- How much room do you have for storage of these dishes, both inside your kitchen and outside the kitchen, such as in your dining room?
- How many people regularly eat meals in your home, and how many meals per day do you serve?
- How often do have guests that you entertain and serve food to?
- How often do you want to wash dishes?
- Do you want all your dishes to match, or do you like or at least not mind mismatched sets?
- Do you need microwave-safe and dishwasher-safe dishes? Do you avoid using your dishes that don’t have these features in everyday use?
Using all of these criteria you can decide how many dishes you believe you’ll use regularly, and how many are excess and therefore clutter in your kitchen.
Once you’ve decided, keep only the best of the best, your favorites, and the ones you use regularly. Then, get rid of the others so you can have more space in your kitchen cabinets and drawers.
The Right Place For Each Category
A good rule of things is to place your dinnerware close to where you are using it and how frequently. Casual dinner sets will be used every day, so I suggest you place them in a cabinet in the kitchen. More formal ones can be stored in the dining area.
What I find very convenient is to store all the cutlery and crockery of the same color or category in the same place: silver cutlery and crystal glassware will be stored close to your best china.
PRO TIP: you can upgrade your storage system by adding helper shelves to the cabinets, this will help you to separate each set of charger plates, dinner sets, and serve ware, so you will be able to grab the set you want without moving the heavy sets stacked above them.
Deep pullout drawers ensure the right serving pieces, linens, and flatware are always within reach. you can use pegboards and dish racks to divide stacks of bowls and plates. These buffers keep the dishes from sliding and chipping when opening and closing the drawer.
Use Drawers For Smaller Items
Drawers are the perfect place for storing napkin rings, place cards, and other small ornaments.
Silverware And Glassware
If you’re storing your silverware in a deep drawer, take advantage of the depth of thinking vertically. Use tall drawer dividers to make compartments, or simply reuse old tissue boxes or storage containers to do the trick.
This will help you to have everything under control more than stacking your silverware in two layers. Prevent stemware from collecting dust by mounting glasses upside-down. Install a wineglass or champagne flute holder underneath the shelves for easy accessibility. This doubles your storage capability by using both the top and bottom of the shelf area.
What About Those Odd Shaped Items?
There are always those one-off odd-shaped items that don’t belong in a category and can’t be neatly lined up, like small vases or large candle holders. I do my best to make sure to keep only things I use, so this group is pared down and requires less in the way of storage. You can keep them on the sideboard in rows as orderly as possible.
Larger vases are either kept out on display or in an upper cabinet in the kitchen, so this is limited to outliers. You will see how good it feels to finally have my tableware neatly organized. This will make the table setting infinitely easier and hence infinitely more enjoyable. Never again you will choose your dinner sets based on which ones you can reach.