11 Creative Ways To Use Baskets To Organize Your Kitchen Clutter

Woven baskets have been beloved for centuries for their essential functionality when it comes to gathering and storage, as well as their beautiful texture and unique handmade aesthetic. As far as storage vessels are concerned, woven baskets are certainly among the nicest to look at, especially compared to much of the plastic containers labeled "organizers" that flood big-box stores by the hundreds. So why not put your unused or thrifted woven baskets to good use, doing double duty, both providing crucial storage and organization to your kitchen, as well as enhancing the room's atmosphere?

By using repurposed baskets as unexpected organizers in your kitchen, you inject the space with an organic, warm, handcrafted quality that's nearly impossible to achieve with artificial materials. At their core, baskets are storage containers that can wrangle your kitchen clutter, making them ideal alternatives to wasteful, ugly plastic organizers. From fruit and veggie storage to pantry organization, baskets might be the organizing items your kitchen has been begging for.

The first on the list is perhaps the most obvious way to showcase a basket in your kitchen: The quintessential produce basket. But this isn't just a relic from a Norman Rockwell painting — using a basket to corral your room-temperature produce in one place is a downright smart way to keep track of exactly what you have, so you can use it promptly before it goes bad. You may want to add a washable bowl liner inside to protect both the food and the basket from direct contact.

What is it about dish towels that makes them so unruly and challenging to organize? Well, fret no more, because baskets are an attractive, budget-friendly solution for storing kitchen towels. Stashed away in a closet, cabinet, or drawer, this versatile organization trick makes both dish and cleaning towels easy to see and access as needed in the kitchen. Simply roll or fold your kitchen towels neatly and line them up in a rectangular or square basket for an elegant and clever storage solution.

Let's be honest, the junk drawer, or any other poorly organized kitchen drawer, is never a pretty sight. However, repurposing small, shallow rectangular baskets as nicer-looking drawer organizers is one way to make a major improvement (plus, of course, actually decluttering the junk drawer's contents). By collecting mini baskets in various shapes, which can take a little time to find just the right ones, you can configure a custom, unique storage system that elevates the aesthetic.

Forget stashing your cleaning essentials haphazardly under the kitchen sink, where they're destined to get lost in the tangle of pipes and other products. Instead, look for a large basket with sturdy handles to corral all of your go-to cleaning supplies. Even if the basket itself ends up under the sink, everything is contained within it, making it easy to find exactly what you need. When you want to clean elsewhere in the home, use the handles to tote your portable cleaning caddy to the next room with ease.

Truthfully, snack food packaging isn't typically very pleasant to look at, with all of its loud graphics and catchy crunch-related puns. But the beautifully simple solution to both an organized pantry — and a welcome break on the eyes — is to stash your snacks in aesthetically pleasing baskets out of sight. By lining up several matching baskets along a shelf with wonderfully neat labels, your pantry turns from an overwhelming grocery-store aisle into a Pinterest-perfect paradise in seconds.

When it comes to entertaining with disposable products, most of us probably have a disheveled pile of plates, napkins, and silverware stuffed into a cabinet to be dealt with another day. However, instead of having these paper products haphazardly strewn across a cabinet shelf, grab a large rectangular basket to wrangle them. When there is a defined place to stash them, it's much easier to maintain and access your stash of disposable dishes and utensils when the time comes to host a barbecue or embark on a picnic.

When it comes to open shelving in a kitchen, finding extra storage that doesn't clutter the airy aesthetic is very challenging. Thankfully, a good-looking basket is the ideal answer, adding a lovely texture to the shelf while also providing an out-of-sight location for gathering and hiding small items. Look for a taller basket you can't see into when standing, or one with a lid to disguise clutter and cause the least disruption to the open shelf's styling.

Who doesn't love a coffee or tea station for grabbing your morning cup of joe or afternoon pick-me-up? Luckily, even if you don't have a formal place for this setup, you can easily create one with a simple basket. Taking a cue from hotels, use a large, shallow tray-style basket to corral everything from the coffee pot or kettle to coffee pods or tea bags (you can organize these in a secondary basket), and add-ins like creamer, sugar, and flavored syrups. Slide the entire thing forward for easy access, and get brewing.

While hiding cooking utensils in a drawer next to the stove is the ideal way to reduce countertop clutter, not everyone has the luxury of a convenient drawer. And some serious home chefs truly prefer to have their most-used utensils right at hand rather than in a drawer when whipping up a tasty treat. So, rather than corralling utensils in an ugly plastic caddy on the counter by the stove, opt for a pretty upright basket to add functionality and storage in an aesthetic way.

Small hanging wall baskets are arguably among the most charming, quirky vessels for collecting small items in the kitchen. Whether used to store room-temperature food items like fruit, dried herbs, and alliums, or to keep easy-to-grab utensils for cooking or writing, these versatile hanging baskets are as practical as they are nice to look at. You can hang an assortment of mini baskets from a peg rail, mount a couple of baskets to the wall with hooks, or suspend a tiered basket from the ceiling.

With technology monopolizing so much of our daily lives, more families are opting to unplug during family meals, homework time, and in the evening. To enforce these screen-free rules, place a lidded basket on the kitchen counter for everyone to deposit their phones, allowing for uninterrupted family dinners to be spent face-to-face. You could even add a few cords inserted through the back of the basket to create a charging station for your devices (as long as there is airflow or you leave the lid off).