What makes a great kitchen is how you organize it. with this book you'll discover dozens of great ideas to save time and make your kitchen work much more efficient. Here are the best tips and tricks for organizing everything in your kitchen.
Here's just a small sample of the tips included:
Toss a few extra plastic clothes pins into your kitchen drawer. Use them to seal packages of partially used foods such as pretzels, chips, noodles, or rice.
Save screw-top glass containers for storing dry goods in the pantry.
Make a knife holder out of your empty thread spools. Insert screws in the spool holes and attach them to a cabinet door. Place the spools in a row, one butted right next to the other. The blades will fit in the gaps between the spools while the handles rest on the spools.
If you store your sharp knives in drawers, keep the knives in a holder to prevent the blades from getting dull.
If you've nowhere to hang a memo board for your notes, paint part of your kitchen door with three coats of blackboard paint.
A phone center with a writing surface can be installed between two wall studs in your kitchen.
Cut the wall between the two studs and build the center to fit the space.
A large pair of tweezers can help you get olives and pickles out of narrow jars; tweezers are also useful for placing garnishes on food without touching the food with your hands, or for removing bones from fish fillets.
Keep an aloe growing in your kitchen. The gel squeezed from a leaf can soothe insect bites, prickly heat, or sunburn.
Washing your ice cube trays occasionally in hot soapy water will keep the cubes from sticking; they'll pop out much more easily.
Rubber-coated plate rack makes a great cookbook holder.
Create your own kitchen sink splash back by cutting a piece of clear plexiglass to size. Drill two small holes in it and nail it up on the wall.
Plastic or wire baskets on casters provide excellent, easy-to-maneuver storage for unrefrigerated vegetables or loose cooking utensils.
To keep recipes clipped from newspapers and magazines so they'll be readily available, fold them into an envelope fastened to an inside cover of a cookbook.
Wehn you find a recipe that's an improvement over one featured in your cookbook, tape a copy of it right over the recipe in the book. The next time you need it, you'll be able to locate it easily by referring to the book's own index.
If you store cast iron pots and pans with their lids inverted or slightly ajar, there will be enough air circulation to discourage rust formation.
If you store your dishes in open dish racks instead of in cabinets, position the racks over the sink. That way you can wash the dishes, put them in place, and they'll drip-dry into the sink.
Napkins, paper towels, or cloth protectors placed between pieces affine china when stacking will help prevent scratching.
Most plastic food containers can be recycled for storing or freezing food.
Mesh bags, wire baskets, and even old nylon stockings make good storage containers for potatoes and onions because they allow the necessary air circulation.
Even when soap bars wear down, they're still useful. Slit a sponge to make a pocket to hold the slivers, wet and squeeze the sponge for foamy suds. Or fill a sock with soap slivers and use it the same way.
To remold leftover soap slivers into bars of soap, place them in a small saucepan, cover them with water, and heat the water to the boiling point.
Lower the heat to simmer, and stir the mixture to melt the soap pieces. When the mixture has the consistency of thick, smooth syrup, remove the pan from the heat. Pour its contents into lightly oiled small containers, such as jar caps or plastic soap dishes. Let the mixture stand for at least three days until hard before tapping the mixture out of the molds.