How We Keep Our Kitchen Safe and Organized with Kids
Don’t hate me, but my kitchen is pretty organized despite 2 tornados kids! 😛 With the chaos that comes with work, raising bilingual kids and homeschooling, I need my kitchen to be therapeutically neat. Since, we try to involve the kids with cooking (and they tend to follow me around), parts of the kitchen are safe “yes” spaces.
I’ll take you on a tour of our kid-friendly kitchen and share where everything is from! This post excludes our pantry which I’ll show in the future.
More tips for creating a prepared environment at home:
- Kids Art Cart, Storage System, and Organization Tips
- How We Organize Our Bilingual Montessori Homeschool Materials
- Homework Organization for Elementary Kids: Before and After Pictures!
5 Benefits of a safe and organized kitchen with kids
Before delving into the the daunting task of organizing the kitchen with kids running around, keep in mind these benefits that makes the effort worthwhile:
- Safety – I need to know that my knives, bleach, and other hazards are far away from my kids!
- Optimizes storage space
- Saves money – Everything is visible so we know what we need. This prevents us from buying duplicates or tools that don’t fit
- Saves time – It’s easier to find what we need
- Paves the way for the kids to contribute with cooking and clean-up!
First step to creating a safe and organized kitchen with kids
As with any room, the first step to organizing a kitchen is to remove duplicate, broken, and rarely used items. Let’s be honest: how many more #1 mom coffee mugs do we need? If you’re not sure where to begin, check out my free starter guide to decluttering with kids.
Read this: Learning How to Declutter After My Immigrant Mother’s Sudden Death
How we keep our kitchen safe and organized with kids
- Kids water and snack station
- Kitchen sink access for kids
- Kitchen tools for kids
- Drawer organization
- Lower and upper cabinets
- Pantry organization (soon to come)
- Cleaning supplies for kids (soon to come)
Kids’ water and snack station
This side table has been a life-saver for parenting and contains three basic needs:
- Self-serve water
- Access to healthy snacks
- Cleaning basics: kitchen napkins, tissues, and towels
See the full tour and rationale in this post about Kids Water, Snack, and Self-Care Station Makes Life Easier for Everyone.
If you don’t have a side table, consider a tiered rolling cart (similar here and here) or put a tray on the counter.
Step stools versus kitchen helper (learning tower) for kids
I spent a long time debating between popular kitchen helpers, also known learning towers, versus regular stepstools.
Ultimately, I was concerned about space and my kids outgrowing another toddler item. Initially, we had bad luck with the Kidcraft step stool. My daughter fell off several times due to the slippery finish and putting her foot in the gap at the back of the stool. Plus, the stool also cracked!
Around 6 years ago, I splurged on these Serena and Lily teak step stools. It’s been the best investment for our children — and my petite self — to get things we need, rest our feet, or sit for a moment. The cost is similar to a child’s kitchen learning tower helper, which could be helpful if you have more space.
Anti-fatigue comfort kitchen floor mat
Last year, we replaced our tattered floor rugs with super comfortable anti-fatigue comfort kitchen floor mats (grasscloth java color). Since my husband is always barefoot, he wanted to get this to make cooking and washing dishes more comfortable. Even though I wear slippers at home, these cushiony mats help me, too.
Kitchen sink and dishwasher
These faucet extenders were very helpful when my kids were younger!
Also, when my kids were babies, we used our countertop to keep drying dishes out of reach:
Now that they are older, we use our dishwasher as the drying rack; we prefer to keep our counters clear. We’ve since given away our over-the-sink rack, so we have one less thing to wash!
Kitchen drawer organization
Cutlery
Nothing revolutionary here, but we use a wood cutlery tray and have sections designated for our kids:
- Forks/spoons/knives – we love the Kiddobloom brand! However, we do not recommend the Pottery Barn set, as the plastic handles faded after a few years.
- Chopsticks: mini bamboo and training set
- Nylon knives (similar here)
- Reusable silicone straws
Knives and cutting boards
Organization and safety are especially important with this drawer. Here we have:
- Bamboo knife organizer block
- Victorinox Swiss Army knives:
- Crinkle cutter
- Leaf herb destemmer (similar version here)
- Mini shape cutters (similar version here)
- Bamboo drawer divider
Towels, oven mitts, aprons
Kitchen towels, oven mitts, and aprons are in the above drawer.
Kitchen tools
These bamboo drawer dividers fit well in our shallow drawers, though we need to declutter our utensils!! I’m laughing at how many spatulas we’ve accumulated when my mother used one pair of chopsticks to cook everything! Organization is always a work-in-progress!
Kids’ kitchen cabinet: the “yes” space
One lower cabinet is designated for my kids’ dishware and to-go containers. On the top row, I added removable Post-It tape labels so my kids would know where to put things back. Our labels are bilingual to encourage everyone to speak Chinese. You can use picture labels if your kids are younger or not yet reading.
- Plates
- Bowls
- Large acacia bowls
- Divided wood 5-part platter
- My mother-in-law’s handmade ceramic bowls, plates, and cups!
On the bottom row, we have the kids’ snack and to-go containers organized in baskets:
- Lunch Bots bento food storage
- Round food storage
- Sistema food storage
- Silicone Stasher bags; we use the snack size most often and prefer the clear color
The adjacent low cabinet houses the kids’ felt Chinese dim sum toys, mini kitchen cooking set (pots and pans, utensils), and play dough tools.
Kitchen plates and bowls organization
This part of my kitchen makes me so happy! These silver cabinet shelf organizers make grabbing the small and large plates we need easier.
Note: Although I would prefer to have much fewer plates and bowls, my mother-in-law is a ceramic artist and has gifted many handmade dishes.
Kitchen glassware organization
As with the dishes, we use the same silver cabinet shelf organizers to maximize space for cups and glasses.
We’ve had the same general dishes and glasses for years!
Spice rack organization
This lazy susan and turntable have made my spice rack and other kitchen condiments easy to find! Condiments are in this cabinet since it’s close to the stove, and I used painter’s tape to make removable labels in our minority language, Chinese. For round surfaces, I recommend painter’s tape because it has more grip compared to Post-It tape.
We also keep our visual timer right on this countertop!
Kitchen pots and pans organization
Organizing our pots and pans involved much trial and error. After returning a fancy-looking rack that failed, this $10 bamboo plate stand saved the day!
Here’s a better view of the back of the cabinet where we keep our lids! Various baking pans rest vertically as well.
Kitchen tupperware organization
Here’s where we store our glass tupperware and mixing bowls. As with our kids’ lunch box cabinet, we use a basket to organize loose lids.
Kitchen baby-proofing: safety cabinet locks for kids
Cleaning chemicals, medicine, knives, and fragile objects should be kept out of reach from young children. Safety locks are recommended to block cabinet access to keep the kitchen safe from life-threatening hazards.
- Safety straps (similar here): We used adhesive safety straps in the apartment we rented before our current home since we were not allowed to drill in the furniture.
- Magnetic safety locks (similar here): These options generally require drilling. This is the most aesthetically pleasing option since the lock is hidden inside the doors. It’s also effective, because “out of sight, out of mind”. When my kids couldn’t see the lock, they gave up after realizing the door wouldn’t open.
Hope you guys enjoyed our kid-friendly kitchen tour and organization tips!
I hope this helps, and I would love to hear which organization and storage solutions were useful or not for your family!