3 Steps to Organize Kitchen Ingredients Japanese Style

Hi everyone! I am maiko, an organizer, and one of the things we often overlook when organizing our kitchen is all of our groceries and spare food. If you don’t organize them properly, it will not only make cooking and cleaning more difficult, but it can also ruin your food! This time, I want to teach you how to organize your kitchen ingredients in 3 important steps, let’s take a look together!

Step 1: Sort by “unopened” and “opened”

In the kitchen there are various kinds of ingredients such as dry food, seasoning packets, cans or spices. Some of them are large enough to use at once, while others are larger and if you can’t use them all at once, you need to store the leftovers.

The most important thing to learn when organizing your kitchen is to learn how to store “opened and used food”. After opening a food package, people usually use a sealing clip to seal the product or put it back in its original box. Whether the food has been opened or not, we always put it back in its original food storage container.

If you put spares (unopened items) together with used items, you won’t be able to keep track of the spares and how much you have, and you won’t be able to keep track of what you have at home. This can also happen if you open a new package of …… when there are old items that you haven’t used yet!

Before sorting your groceries, divide them into “unopened” and “opened” categories. Food that has been opened and used can be put into another container and stored elsewhere. If you want to put it back in the original bag or box, remember to have a special place for opened food!

Step 2: Classify by Size and Shape

A trash can with a handle or a kitchen drawer is a place we often use to store food. Because the amount and type of food often change, there is no need to sort them carefully.

However, there are so many types of food available in the market, and they come in different shapes and sizes, so if you put them all in the same place, there is a chance that small items will get buried at the bottom, making you forget about them, or it will be inconvenient to take them out and use them every time. In addition, if the sizes are different, it is impossible to utilize the storage space effectively.

Therefore, before storing, please divide the food into several categories according to “size” and “shape”, such as boxed food, large food bags, canned food, small food, etc. In this way, we can place food in a place or drawer according to the amount of storage space needed, or place several bins in the storage area to categorize food.

Incidentally, many people don’t know how to organize their groceries because their storage is so full of food that they don’t know what’s inside. Therefore, when organizing groceries, you should not only sort them by size and shape, but you should also remember to empty each storage space!

Step 3: Use the Upright Storage Method

After sorting food by size and shape, the last step is “upright storage”. With the upright arrangement, all types of food will not be stacked on top of each other, and you can immediately see the contents when looking down from above.

At a glance, upright storage allows you to no longer put groceries in a forgotten state, and before you go out to buy, you can also immediately confirm your home inventory to avoid unnecessary spending increases. As for storage tools, such as storage boxes or L-shaped bookshelves, they are good aids for upright storage!

In addition to sorting items by size and shape, you can also consider the number of people in your home and how often you go out to buy goods when planning your storage space. This way, you can assess how much food you should store in your home, and it will be easier to manage it.

Learning how to organize your kitchen supplies will not only make them easier to manage, but will also reduce food waste and lighten the load of household chores, so be sure to learn!