When we moved this past January, I unpacked the kitchen and living room first. At the time the larger kitchen was overwhelming to me so I just put things where I *thought* I would use them.
Five months later, I realized I needed to rethink the kitchen and streamline the whole thing for more efficiency.
For years now, and in every single home we’ve lived in, I’ve had a Baking Center (see the book Large Family Logistics for more information on “centers”), but beyond that I never really gave “centers” much thought because I lived in houses with kitchens that were too tiny to need efficiency! (But I must tell you for some reason having a large kitchen makes it 100 times easier to keep the kitchen clean-makes no sense, but it’s true!)
So, here’s a little visual tour of how I set things up. I will probably need to post these diagrams in the kitchen so we can find everything now!
Starting at the garage door:
I had the baking dishes on the other side of the kitchen and the washcloths and towels in the drawer where the hotpads are now. I’ve always kept our vitamins in a basket up away from little hands. Putting the keys to my van and Ty’s car (the only vehicle that fits in the garage) by the garage door in the same basket works well.
Now, let’s work our way to the right (just left of the sink):
The biggest changes in this section were the lazy- susan in the corner and moving the coffee pot to this area. The lazy-susan had not been well thought out at all. I had a mishmash of stuff in there. My mother-in-law happened to be here the day I tore into the kitchen and her reaction when she discovered I had put the pots and pans in the lazy-susan instead of their original home was to declare, “That is so much better!” Nothing like a little confirmation that your attempts to streamline actually make sense!
When I moved the coffee pot (from the right side of the sink to the left side), I also moved the coffee grounds and filters and mugs to the labeled cabinet. More on that in a bit.
The toaster is not a daily-used item, so it is stored, but the Bosch and to some extent, the Vita-Mix are, so they stay on the counter. I’m also so thankful to finally have a kitchen big enough to put my utensils on the counter (we call the thing that holds them a “roundy-roundy”, but I didn’t figure you’d have a clue what I was talking about if I said that!)
And in case you are wondering, that weird looking knife in front of the knife block is an Ulu knife, handcrafted in Alaska for my favorite mountain man. 
Lastly, the bar area (this is one of those scary catch-all areas that must be tidied CONSTANTLY!):
Originally, I had the glasses, plates, and silverware all separate from each other, almost triangulated from each other. I realized that made no sense whatsoever, so I put them all in proximity of each other so I can easily grab from all three places and lay them out on the bar (providing the bar is tidy–see how this all works together to force a homemaker to keep things orderly?)
I also moved some of the often-used items to the end cabinet so that when the dishwasher is opened it doesn’t block the cabinets that dishes go in. Ideally, I would have the mixing bowls on the other side of the kitchen, but I don’t have enough of the right sized cabinets over there, so this was a good compromise.
The laptop you see in the picture is my old laptop which is now used by my oldest two for school. Megan does her Rosetta Stone Spanish
I also have a pantry and another tall cabinet next to the refrigerator that hold a lot of office supplies, teas, bibs, a dust buster, and playdough. I haven’t really worked through that cabinet at all. Someday soon, I hope.
And you might notice in the first picture, I have a plastic stacker on the dining room side of the bar. The things we have in there are either computer related or school related.
The side of the refrigerator holds our schedules and chore lists. And yes, that is the buffalo skull up there on top of the fridge…don’t ask.
Oh, and the orange gladiolas? I bought them for $4 when they were just budding out, so that I would have a longer time to enjoy them. They don’t streamline my kitchen in any way, but they sure do make me smile!
A kitchen is so much more functional if you organize it.
I love the baking station! We are getting ready to move and I’m leaving a big, open space kind of kitchen for a galley kitchen. My hopes are to seriously streamline everything and keep the cupboard tops cleaned off.
We are losing our pantry so we can have a second bath but we now have a huge 2 story building in the back yard that will be used for storage, etc. I’m actually excited about organizing all of that lol!
Thanks for sharing!
Michelle
A galley kitchen is what I came from! It wasn’t that bad except I also had a built in oven so the countertop space was almost nothing. The 2 story building out back DOES sound neat!
I need to reorganize my kitchen badly. Thank you for the inspiration, hopefully now I can get it done!
I am in the process of emptying my kitchen. It will have some remodel work done in a few weeks. I am actually looking forward to reorganizing it, hopefully in a more functional way. We are getting 30′ stove, a pantry, and rearranging our cabinets.
That will be great! Hopefully you do better than I did the first time! lol
currently, our oven is a 50yr old 15″ wall oven and our main pantry is in the basement. I am so ready for this change.
Thank you for these last two posts. I really enjoy-not to mention that it is highly inspiring and helpful-seeing how others fit their large families into “regular” sized houses. I have been switching bedrooms around at my house trying to find the best way to make us fit (we have 7 children). We rent also (military) but we may actually be in one place for awhile so we are looking into buying, and I think how funny it is the way us larger-than-”normal”, homeschooling families envision the uses for different rooms. Living room AND family room? I’m thinking “school room”. Ridiculously gigantic master walk-in closet? I’m thinking “nursery”!
LOL–so true!
We’re moving to a smaller kitchen so I’ve been purging a lot lately. Hopefully we can make everything work but we won’t know until we get there and I’m sure it will take more than a few tries to get everything right. : )
Wow, your kitchen looks great! *I love that green on your walls* I agree, it is encouraging to see how you make it all work in the space you have, instead of letting a growing family be a reason to covet “more”. We’re a family of four in a two bed/ one bath apartment, but realistically, we may very well end up being a family of 6 or 7 in this same spot! We’ve decided that once the kids begin to out-number us, we’ll trade rooms and they can have the master!
I’ve thought about giving the kids the master too, except I’ve never been comfortable letting little kids sleep where there is a bathroom right there…I have visions of the toddler playing in the toilet while I sleep!
We just had a kitchen remodel. I reorganized everything, and NOW my kids are driving me BATTY, they refuse to return things back where they belong! I keep finding pots and pans anywhere and everywhere…and it is making me a very crabby Mamma! (I even labeled drawers and cabinets with what the contents are supposed to be!)
This is an issue I had not anticipated!
So much cabinet space, they don’t care where things go now!
LOL–perhaps a little “hand-holding” is in order?
It’s beautiful
It’s so much fun to see other ladies houses, how they arrange things, etc. It was a great post to read and gave me some ideas too. I have a galley style kitchen, so it’s not the biggest. Last summer I decluttered all the cupboards and got rid of things I don’t use, this led to a lot more extra space in my cupboards so that I could store some of my smaller kitchen appliances in my cupboards instead of on my counter. This made my small kitchen seem soooooo much bigger!
Ah, vitamins and keys, a match made in kitchen heaven. I think we all have some items that end up together over the years that leave others scratching their heads… ours is my little no-man’s-land bin that holds the paddle, batteries, and my Tupler Technique booklet!
My sister keeps all her kids’ spoons with her camera. ??? Our brains just can’t take one more tiny decision sometimes!
The spoons and camera made me laugh out loud! Love it!
Thanks for sharing! You have such a nice large kitchen:) You’ve done a great job of organizing and thinking everything through. And I love your glads! They are one of my very favorite flowers. We were not able to find a place to put them this year, and I was very sad.
I have a question not related to your kitchen, Amy, but, how did you put the labels on your photos? and how do you get the PDF and Print at the bottom??
Hope it’s ok to ask here:)
You are a brave woman–I might let the whole world see my kitchen, but the bedrooms? Maybe not. At least not before a lot of cleaning:)
Blessings,
Wendy
My darling husband bought me photoshop as a birthday gift a couple of years ago
However, before that I used Picnik. Wonderful FREE tool!
Oh, of course! duh–my son has Photoshop and lets me use it:) Like making a button–never thought of it that way:+ How do you get the “Print” option at the bottom?