Preparing to host Thanksgiving can be incredibly overwhelming, especially if you are cooking everything from scratch.
Your kitchen needs to be in top condition to meet your demands while impressing your guests. This means blitzing your kitchen cleaning and perfecting your organizing before the big day arrives.
I am a professional organizer and here, I share my top five tips for organizing a kitchen before hosting to wow Thanksgiving guests and help you keep your cool when cooking.
Areas to organize in the kitchen to wow Thanksgiving guests
When hosting Thanksgiving dinner, it’s the small details that can make a big impression. Even if you don’t have the time to declutter and organize all of these areas, focusing on one or two can wow your guests.
Here are the top tips my team and I at Ready, Set, Organize, use in work for our clients, and our own homes.
1. The spice drawer
If you have a spice drawer, great. If you don’t, but you have the room for it, consider making the switch. It may take some reconfiguring, but I can’t stress enough what an impact this small change can make.
For less than $60 and a half hour, your guests will be so impressed by your spice drawer that they’ll want one themselves.
The beauty of a spice drawer is the ability to see all of your spices at once. Spice shelves, like bamboo display shelves, at Amazon, are a fine alternative, but in our experience, it’s still impossible to see all of the labels if the shelves are full.
To enhance your spice drawer, we recommend these acrylic drawer inserts, also at Amazon, and a set of spice jars with matching labels. The acrylic drawer inserts expand to fit almost any drawer perfectly and allow you to organize spices in a way you can see each one.
2. The towel drawer
Many kitchens have an excess of dish towels that are ready for their title change of 'rags.' Upgrade your towel drawer by buying a couple of fresh, matching dish towel sets, and remove the rest.
Next, file-fold the towels. Lay the towel out flat, with the short side facing you. Fold the towels in thirds lengthwise, creating a long rectangle. Fold the rectangle in half, then in thirds. Stand the towel up in the drawer with the rounded edge facing up. If you have more than one row of towels, use a bamboo drawer divider to separate the rows.
These waffle-weave towels are loomed entirely from cotton and stonewashed for a soft, absorbent touch. They are lightweight, quick to dry, and hold their form from wash to wash
Made from 100% cotton, these towels are absorbent, quick drying, and rugged so they do not lose their shape, softness, or color with frequent use
If you are someone who likes to get their Christmas decor up and ready for Thanksgiving these 100% linen towels are the perfect addition to your kitchen
3. The space under the sink
As a professional organizer, I often find that clients are embarrassed when our team shows up, especially when it comes to the area under the sink. No client has ever proudly shown us this area, claiming it as the only place in their home they can keep organized.
Instead, for most people, under the sink becomes a black hole of cleaning products, old sponges, gross gloves, and an excessive amount of grocery bags.
If your Thanksgiving guests are unfamiliar with your home, there’s a good chance they’ll open the cabinet below the sink in search of the garbage can. Take 15 minutes to declutter and organize this area to really impress your guests.
When organizing under the sink, start by taking everything out, spraying the inside of the cabinet, and giving it a good wipe-down. No more sticky messes here. The group 'like with like' and create categories: cleaning products, sponges, gloves, dish washing pods, trash bags, and so forth.
Make your home smell like fall for Thanksgiving guests by stocking up on these seasonal cleaning essentials that infuse your home with the warm, spicy aroma of gingerbread
Declutter under the sink and dispose of things you don’t use anymore. Relocate certain cleaning products to another area like the garage or laundry room storage if they aren’t used in the kitchen. If you have a housekeeper who brings their own products, consider pairing back to just your essential cleaning tools to keep things streamlined.
Once you’ve paired down to just the necessities, it’s time to contain these items. A simple matching set of acrylic containers from Amazon is the perfect organizing solution here. Trash bags go into one, dishwashing pods into another, cleaning supplies into a third, and sponges into the fourth. Bonus points if you label the acrylic bins to ensure this continues to be an area you’re proud to show off.
This handy portable label maker connects to your phone to make printing custom labels for home organizing simpler
4. The utensil drawer
The utensil drawer is one of the most used and messiest areas in the kitchen. With a few small improvements, you’ll be sure to impress your guests with this drawer.
A common mistake we see in our clients' homes is not having a utensil organizer that properly fills the drawer. Often our clients are using small plastic utensil organizers they’ve had since college, that only take up half the drawer. Leaving all this empty space creates a clutter hot spot for disposable silverware, straws, wooden chopsticks, chip clips, and some hot sauce packets you brought home two years ago.
Again, you’ll want to take everything out. Vacuum any crumbs and give the drawer a good wipe-down. Insert an expandable bamboo utensil organizer, at Amazon, as this should sufficiently fill the drawer and give you room for all of your most-used utensils. Marvel at how this small change just made a major impact!
Look out for the signs you need to replace your flatware while organizing your kitchen to ensure your tablescaping is perfect for your incoming guests. Replace mismatched sets with a timeless stainless steel set that will serve you for years to come
5. The pantry
Now this area might take longer than 30 minutes if you’re hoping to do a full pantry organizing overhaul. But if you’re short on time, motivation, or both, then stick to making a few simple pantry storage changes.
Start by grouping your pantry items together by type – for example, pasta, grains and rice, cereals, bars, canned food, and so forth. This will make things both easier to find when cooking for multiple guests, and help to reduce visual noise to make a pantry look expensive. If you have time, consider removing unnecessary packaging where possible and decanting dried food goods into beautiful jars for the ultimate pantry uplift.
Contain anything you cannot decant or unpack in groups with other similar items in beautiful storage baskets to keep clutter to a minimum and limit spills. This will also make cleaning a pantry easier.
These jars with airtight lids are perfect for keeping items fresher for longer
For a more aesthetic forward approach to organizing, pick storage jars with bamboo lids that you can easily stack
Opting for plastic bins for your pantry will make cleaning up spills and keeping your pantry sanitary easier
Organizing your kitchen before Thanksgiving will have a knock-on effect, making hosting easier and simplifying your Thanksgiving clean-up afterward too.
It's important, however, to remember to start small and don’t stress yourself out. The holidays are about quality time with family and friends and even if your house isn’t perfect, the celebration will be.
