Organize For Success With Labeling

Organize for success is one of my mottos in the kitchen. No system will ever be perfect and being organized is a relative term. There’s no end to improving so as soon as it works for you, I’d call that organized enough.

In this post I’m sharing a few tips specifically about labeling. Labels for anything and everything. Labeling to fix some pain point in your kitchen.

What spot in your kitchen could use a little organizing with labels?

Four containers in front of colourful dishes showing ideas to label ingredient; one with the amount to use in baking, one with two names used interchangeably and one with a full recipe on it.

Identify An Area For Improvement

Here’s how I worked through the steps to organize the job of making my gluten free flour mix. Not just the flours but also the container, the labels and all the things I use to make it.

I thought through the process and decided I wanted a system to streamline the process. This is what I wanted in the end.

An easy to grab bucket to put on the counter with everything, or almost everything, already in it. That included the container I would make the new batch of flour in, plus all the flours, bowls, my digital scale and a strainer.
A second container to transfer the small amount of leftover flour into.
The recipe right there so I could see it at a glance as I was measuring.

This is the video of me making my flour mix but just the opening picture shows you the final system I came up with. You can see the bucket with the recipe label I attached to it and the other items I use. In the end I left out the digital scale because I use it for other jobs and it already had a handy spot in my kitchen.

YouTube player — How To Make and Store a Gluten Free Flour Mix

Organize For Success To Minimize Food Waste

I think everyone knows what I mean when I say I found a science project growing in my fridge, right? It can’t be helped but for me two easy strategies to prevent this kind of food waste are:

Use clear containers, preferably stackable.
Label everything.

I don’t label everything; I’m just saying it’s a good strategy. I used to think ‘I’ll use that up in a few days’ or ‘I’ll remember what that is’. But by Friday I can’t remember what I ate on Monday and this goes on week after week. You can decide to fix it though and I've done a pretty good job of that.

I have two labeling systems at my fingertips so when it’s not labeled in my kitchen it’s because I was just too lazy to spend ten seconds making the label. My two systems are a Dymo label maker and the standard sticky labels from an office store or a Dollar Store.

Two sizes of Sticky Labels with a pen in each package for easy use

I keep these accessible in a drawer in my kitchen. The Dymo label maker is used for salad dressings or jars that will be in my fridge for a while. Sticky labels work better for things going into the freezer. I keep two sizes of sticky labels with a pen right inside each package making it really easy to use. I'm not 100% but I rarely find a science project in my fridge any more.

a quote "We don't need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.

Labeling To Learn

When I started gluten free cooking the amount of new information was overwhelming. Most of the flours and starches seemed to have two names so I started labeling them like that. Then I just kept going with the label maker. This picture shows some of the ways I labeled items to learn the names plus how to use the ingredient. I also included other examples of using labels for spice mixes that work for me.

Sweet Rice Flour (AKA Glutinous Rice Flour)
Tapioca Starch (AKA Tapioca Flour)
Xanthan Gum ¼ tsp/1 cup flour

Organize for success with labeling is how I use labels to help me learn and be efficient in the kitchen. — Organize For Success With Labeling -photo credit Jim Little

These labels took a little more effort (and they’re not pretty) but they have saved me lots of time looking for recipes.

Cornstarch container – my label has the recipe for white sauce and I know I can just add cheese to turn it into a cheese sauce.
Spice bottle of taco seasoning (shown above) – I always make my own spice mix so I put the recipe right on the bottle. I made corrections but never got back to making it look pretty.
Chinese Black Beans – I don’t make Chinese Black Bean Sauce often so I wanted the recipe to be with the beans so I didn't need to look for it.

A yellow box of Preserved Chinese Black Beans beside the jar they are be stored in. Attached to the jar is a recipe for Chinese Black Bean Sauce.

These are just a few ideas to help you notice some little things that annoy you in your kitchen and fix them. Throughout this website I share tips and tricks like these that I use in my kitchen. I encourage you to use the ones that make sense to you.

Let me know in the comments below if you have a clever kitchen tip that you're proud of.

Happy cooking!