If you’re a gourmet cook, allocate extra space for specialty pots and pans. But if you bring in food frequently or don’t cook anything fancy, you can get by with just two fry pans (small and large), three saucepans (small, medium, and large), and a stock pot.

Do you hate loading and unloading the dishwasher and have turned to disposable products? Keep only a basic amount of dishes and glassware and let the rest go.

Create zones for the most frequently performed tasks of washing, prepping, baking, cooking, and clean-up. The goal is to minimize the distance and friction within areas.

Don’t overlook decluttering your junk drawer.

Discard anything that needs repair (when will you find time to do that?) or that you haven’t used within the last year.

Make sure that the only things in your kitchen are things you use in the kitchen. Don’t keep paperwork, tools, or non-kitchen-related items here.

Take advantage of vertical space. Racks, floating shelves, hooks, magnetic strips, and bookshelves help. But don’t fill space just because you have it–resist covering your horizontal space in addition to your vertical space.

Think of your kitchen as real estate. Prime real estate, the most accessible areas, is reserved for items used daily or weekly. Store serving pieces or pots & pans used only a few times in harder-to-reach kitchen areas or even in other storage areas such as the basement or garage.

Once you’ve achieved space optimization, make a point to re-evaluate a couple of times a year. Gadgets, low-use appliances, and non-kitchen-related items creep back in quickly. Staying vigilant ensures your new and improved kitchen continues to work well for you.