Lovely Little Spaces

If the kitchen is the heart of a home, then optimizing that space with thoughtful organization can lead to a pleasant pulse through the rest of the house. Professional organizer Sierra Adkins arranged the kitchen of this client’s 1,200-square-foot home in Mount Washington, demonstrating that small spaces can still bring maximum function and beauty.

Sierra’s tips for organizing in a small space:

From my experience, one of the most problematic areas in the home is the pantry. The pantry is a tricky place to organize because you usually don’t buy the same things every week. A simple thing everyone can do is use bins that are labeled. Keeping the categories somewhat broad on the labels will also help when putting items back into your pantry.

A big part of organizing an area and keeping it organized is having a spot for everything. I like to use bins of all different sizes to categorize items and a label maker to label the bins. I find this makes it easier to put things back where they are supposed to go. I usually get my bins from Amazon or Target.

I really enjoyed organizing the kitchen cabinets and pantry. The bins were all a perfect fit, and everything looked so neat and easy to find. The clients at this home were open to my ideas of rearranging some things to maximize the space better, and they really enjoyed how it all came together!

I think a big challenge for people is letting go of things. Purging is a very important step to organizing. My motto is: “If you don’t use it, you don’t need it!” However, it’s often that people have attachments to certain items. Something I do to help with this is create memory boxes for them. Memory boxes are a great way to keep special items you have an emotional attachment to without having them clutter your home. You can just put the items in the box & store it in a garage, attic, or other storage space. Plus, whenever you want to look at all your special things, they are all in one place for you!

By Jessica Alyea | Photos by Emily McCanless

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