Storing all your kitchen appliances and tools can be a cause for headaches.
Luckily there are lots of expert voices on the craft of organizing kitchen gadgets. In this article, I’m sharing my no-sweat tips and tricks for how to organize your kitchen gadgets.
1. Store a Stand Mixer With a Lift
The stand mixer is one of the most used appliances in my kitchen. Whether I’m busy baking at hyperspeed during the holidays or simply making a batch of weekend banana bread, I prefer to have my stand mixer close at hand.
However, it’s not a small machine. When I bring it out of a drawer, it’s heavy and a little clumsy to have to plug in and start.
Why not use a lift?
By installing a lifting platform in a cabinet nearby a countertop, you can get the best of both worlds: you can hide it away, and you can access it with ease by simply lifting medium-sized kitchen gadgets.
Toasters, blenders, hot water boilers, and sous-vide machines are all perfect for deep pull-out cabinets. You’ll also want to have a strong light source near the cabinet.
Otherwise, the deeper recesses of the storage area won’t be visible. And you know what they say: out of sight, out of mind.
Unless you want to forget about some of the smaller utensils you don’t regularly use (the ones that always seem to slide to the back of cabinets!), make sure your kitchen is well-lit.
2. Place Your Air Fryer on a Stand
Air fryers are popular all over the country right now. It’s almost a craze with how they’re saturating the market and showing up in viral cooking videos on nearly every form of social media!
I bought one recently, and I can say honestly that my air fryer has quickly climbed to be one of my most used gadgets. But what do you do with it after you’re done frying? It certainly takes up big real estate on a countertop.
What I recommend is turning to a portable stand to store your air fryer to keep your air fryer out of the way but easy to access.
If you have extra space on your kitchen floor, then it makes sense to bring in an extra vertical storage space in the form of a stand. A plant stand works well. It’s a portable solution that also allows you to wheel the air fryer out of the kitchen when it’s not needed.
Plus, it won’t take up any more precious cabinet space!
3. Portable Kitchen Island
Do you have plentiful kitchen floor space?
One easy solution to bring more organization to your kitchen gadgets is to wheel in an extra kitchen island. Many models have lots of different storable areas for your tools and appliances.
Baskets can store unwieldy items while hanging hooks can organize wires and smaller objects.
The best part of the island is, once you’re done with dinner, you just wheel it out of the cooking space, and the kitchen looks wide open and beautiful like always.
4. Use a Pegboard
You might be familiar with pegboards from seeing them in garages or workshops. It’s true—they are commonly used to hang hammers, saws, and drills.
But why can’t we use them in the kitchen? In fact, pegboard fits right in with the kitchen.
Try pegboard as a backdrop for handheld gadgets or as a vertical space to separate utensils and other vertically-oriented items.
Remember, Julia Child even installed pegboards at her home cooking area. Surely that gives pegboard a seal of approval!
5. Appliance-Only Pantry
Part of keeping appliances organized is dedicating a unique space for each. In your pantry, you probably have a system laid out to separate spices from dry goods and so on.
Why not co-opt a large cabinet (or build a brand new one!) to exclusively store appliances?
6. Try a Rail System
Quite a few top home and kitchen brands are moving toward rail systems for organizing hanging items. It makes a lot of sense to install one in your kitchen. You can hang thermometers, electric knives, and any number of gadgets from rails.
Plus, they’re customizable. You don’t have to stop at hooks on a rail!
Baskets and shelves are also great additions to rails. The big benefit is, you get to move your gadgets off the countertop and up into the empty space a foot or two above.
7. Move Rarely-Used Gadgets Up High
With heavier appliances, you have to factor in their usefulness when deciding where to organize them. Blenders might get daily use, while ice-cream makers are more of a seasonal tool.
I recommend storing less frequently used gadgets in your high ceiling cabinets rather than down low. In general, my rule is: go low with heavy equipment you use weekly and go high for equipment you use less than weekly.
Since we’re on the topic of kitchen gadgets, make sure to also take a look at my article on “The 33 Best Kitchen Gadgets To Make Cooking Easier“! I cover specific recommendations for the best gadget depending on your needs 😉
8. Over-the-Cabinet Kitchen Organizer
Here’s a cool way to make use of the inside of your cabinets!
Hang a storage organizer over the door of a lower cabinet and fill it with parts of gadgets that you frequently need—batteries, instructions, extra cords, and cables, for example.
Kitchen organizers come in a wide array of storage options. I recommend you include a deep wire basket element below and a shallow basket above for small parts and items.
9. Lazy Susans
Let’s face it, we all struggle with making use of the corners of our counter space. It just seems difficult to organize gadgets there. Luckily, there are some solutions.
Reuse a lazy susan and station it in the corner. You’ll find that you get more use out of that previously cramped space.
Organize small appliances on one shelf of the lazy susan and place one of your larger items on the higher shelf. By distributing the organizing space that way, you get fast access to a big appliance and multiple small ones. The best of both worlds!
10. Pull-Out Drawer For Charging Devices
It seems like half of the tools we use in the kitchen (not to mention the whole house) require a charge. But how do you dedicate a space to charging your kitchen gadgets without all the unsightly cables and devices making it an eyesore?
One solution is to refashion a cutlery cabinet into a charging port. It’s not difficult to set up an outlet inside the cabinet so that all the cables remain out of sight.
Now you have a dedicated area for phones and chargeable kitchen gadgets, and your kitchen won’t look like a computer lab!
11. Go Low with Your Slow Cooker
The slow cooker doesn’t get regular use in my kitchen. But when I need it, I need it close by. With such a large, heavy, and irregular shape, the slow cooker doesn’t naturally fit on the countertop of many kitchens (unless it’s part of your weekly meal plan).
I recommend storing this hefty but essential tool in a low cabinet rather than a heavy one. Why? If you’re like me, you’re much more likely to use a kitchen appliance if it’s easy to access.
If you store the cooker and other heavy appliances in your highest cabinet, it’ll be harder to grab if you need it for a sudden change of meals. You won’t need a ladder either!
12. Eliminate Clutter
When you come home with a new kitchen gadget, the first thing you’re likely to see in the box is clutter. Wires, instruction manuals, additional cups, and parts—that’s just the beginning of it.
There are a few solutions to minimize the clutter that comes with your gadgets.
Wrap the power cables behind your appliance when you store it. Keep instruction manuals digitally on your computer rather than on paper. All the food processor attachments can go in a plastic bag.
13. Think about Donating Unused Gadgets
Over ten or 15 years of heavy use, a kitchen can start to get weighed down with all the appliances. The electric knife sharpener that you bought on a whim and only used for a week is likely collecting dust in a bottom cabinet.
There are probably several gadgets which you don’t use anymore. Diets change, better recipes are invented—whatever the reason, many of us could donate unused appliances.
If giving away that second stand mixer is too hard, you can also make an inventory of your gadgets and organize them by use frequency. When you arrange all your equipment by order of frequency, it’s easy to store them accordingly.
Kitchen Gadget Organization Summary
How to organize your kitchen gadgets no longer requires rebuilding your kitchen or sacrificing counter space. It’s much simpler—all you have to do is be smart with empty space!
Rethink cabinets to include hanging areas. Hide appliances simply with doors and dedicated pantries.
With some of my tips included here, you’re sure to redesign your kitchen into a form-fitting, organized space. Doing so will improve your cooking efficiency and, simply, make kitchen time a happier time!
