Prepping the Kitchen for Fall Cooking and Baking ’24

Summertime brings a huge cleanout for me each year. This summer, I reorganized a lot of areas of my house, but definitely spent the most time in the kitchen! My cabinets and drawers had really gotten bad. We do a LOT in there. It’s more than just a kitchen, really. It’s also our school, our science lab, art studio, gift wrap station, and much more. One of the benefits a of good kitchen cleanout is that everything I do in there now works a lot smoother than before and I’m already looking ahead and seeing how much more enjoyable it will be for fall cooking and baking.

Last August ’23 I posted 3 things I had done that month to prepare my kitchen for fall. You can read that post here. Today I’m going to share 4 things I’ve been working on this month to get ready for FALL ’24 in the kitchen!

#1 Reorganizing the Pantry

When we moved to this house, I had always had small kitchens (which I loved!) so everything in this kitchen was larger than I’d had before. Much more storage and workspace! Soon after we moved in I had a guest see my pantry and comment on how tiny it was. I laughed and said, “It’s the biggest pantry I’ve ever had!” But I do realize it’s smaller than most are built now, and I do find myself having to work to get everything in there and keep it tidy.

I finally invested in some sturdy baskets and they’re working beautifully for keeping the pantry items organized! However, my biggest problem was where to store my grain buckets. They’re big and heavy! But I need them easily accessible for milling. So, I took out the bottom shelf from my pantry and my buckets fit perfectly (I’ll share in a minute where the items from that shelf went).

I also finally invested in gamma lids and boy I wish I’d done that years ago. The lids that come with the buckets are so hard to get on and off but these gamma lids are a breeze. They easily spin on and off. Each bucket has a different color lid: Green lid is hard white wheat, white lid is soft white wheat, red lid is hard red wheat, blue lid is the spelt, black lid is the brown rice, and orange lid is the sucanat.

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#2 Create a New Baking Zone

I’ve always done my baking mostly in this corner where my mixer is, so I decided to move my baking supplies from the pantry (that bottom pantry shelf that got the boot) to this cabinet. I had cleaned out so many dishes, cookware, and gadgets in other cabinets that I was able to able to move things around and clear out a whole cabinet to dedicate to baking. And it’s right above the mixer and baking tools.

I think both my daughter and I are finding this system much easier than digging into the back of the pantry. We can see everything at a glance. This will be wonderful for Christmas baking!

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#3 Make a Spice Drawer

This was once a gadget drawer which really just became a junk drawer because we didn’t use a fraction of those gadgets anymore. So, I cleaned it out and ordered a drawer-style spice rack for all my herbs and spices which were located in the cabinet above and always falling out when we tried to find the one we needed. It was so frustrating. I love having them in this drawer now! It’s so much easier while I’m cooking and baking.

And I have some newly dried herbs from my summer garden that are ready to bottle this week!

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#4 Clean Up the Recipes

This last one is a long one so I’m going to give it its own post this week. But for now, I’ll give you a sneak peek. I have a bookshelf in my kitchen for my cookbooks and recipe binders. I’ve already have had this system for many years, but it needed some major tidying up. I hadn’t been putting my recipes back in the binders, so many of them were in a messy stack which made it hard to find what I needed. I’m so excited to have this one done! I’ll share more tomorrow!

It has felt so good to get my kitchen and other rooms around the house cleaned out. Rethinking my spaces and how I use them has been key. I feel much more productive and efficient in my workspaces now! I’ll be back here tomorrow for more about my recipe system!