How Ina Garten Declutters Her Cutting Board Collection

If you've ever watched an episode of "The Barefoot Contessa" hosted by Ina Garten, you've seen her pristine kitchen and work space. This gorgeous room in her Hamptons home is full of sunlight, beauty, and charm, with every tool, pan, and ingredient stored in its perfect place. This includes her extensive collection of cutting and serving boards. While you might spy some of them leaning upright on a countertop, Garten stores most of them in a very smart way, which also happens to be aesthetically pleasing – she places them upright in a large basket that sits on the floor at the end of her island. This is just one of her tips for decluttering your kitchen.

Instead of having to open up a drawer or cabinet and dig a board out, all she needs to do is reach down and grab whichever board she needs. It's easy as pie since she's able to see them all at once. And the wicker basket she keeps them in gives a beautiful farmhouse or cottage feel to her cozy kitchen. Since Garten spends most of her filmed time in the kitchen, it makes sense that she keeps her cutting board basket near her workspace, but you can place yours wherever is convenient for you, whether that's tucked away in an unused kitchen corner, or inside your pantry.

This brilliant and attractive idea isn't just for cutting and serving boards, in fact, it's a perfect method for storing any large or long kitchen tool that can be cumbersome stuffed into a cabinet or drawer. Place your sheet pans upright in baskets, as well as cooling racks, and muffin pans. You can also use a basket for storing tall, awkward gadgets like rolling pins, pizza peels, rolled up silicone baking mats, and s'mores skewers.

If you struggle to find storage in your kitchen for kitchen linens like dish towels, aprons, tablecloths, and placemats, a basket is a great place to store them. Be sure that whatever you store in a floor basket isn't breakable or fragile, like glass cutting boards, which are death sentences for your knives anyway. While it can be tempting to keep large serving platters in baskets, they could bump into each other and chip or break. This includes anything with buttons or switches, as well. You don't want to unintentionally activate them with a rogue rolling pin.