"One thing about me is that I love spending time in the kitchen. I enjoy cooking meals for my family, prepping for dinner parties and holidays, and of course, making myself a classic girl dinner. Even though I know my way around a kitchen, I’ll be the first to admit I love a good kitchen hack. If there’s a device that will save me time, help me organize my space, or spare me from doing a million dishes at the end of the night, I need it. I am also very easily influenced by what I see on TikTok, so if someone swears by it, I will immediately add it to the cart. All this to say: I know a thing or two about kitchen essentials that can make your life easier.
I’ve got a few kitchen gadgets that I absolutely swear by, and whether you’re a novice in the kitchen or a budding chef, you’ll no doubt find them helpful, too. These kitchen essentials are so simple yet feel so luxurious and will transform the way you cook and tidy your space.
10 Kitchen Essentials That Make My Life So Much Easier
Call me old-fashioned, but I have a lot of cookbooks and even a recipe box. When I find recipes I love, I like to keep hard copies of them so I never lose them. But when I’m cooking, I don’t want to take up valuable counter space with a book or have to flip between pages with dirty hands. Adding a cookbook stand to my kitchen was a chic yet practical addition. If you’re like me and you prefer cookbooks over digital recipes, you will love having one of these on your countertop.
Many of my favorite recipes follow the Mediterranean diet, so olive oil is heavily used in my kitchen. While I could eyeball my olive oil measurement, the perfectionist in me prefers to measure it out. These olive oil dispenser bottles, which I also use for vinegar and infused oils, are a game changer. I love that I don’t have to use measuring cups, which means fewer dishes. Plus, these are absolutely adorable and will tie in with just about every kitchen aesthetic.
When I bought this mini vegetable chopper, it was truly because I was getting lazy with all my chopping and cutting board cleaning. This small but mighty gadget chops literally everything I need—peppers, onions, garlic, and more. It’s simple: the more you spin the device, the smaller it chops your food. So, while I mostly use it for quickly cutting up veggies, it also can be used as a food processor alternative, which is perfect if you want to make your own salsa or pesto but don’t want to splurge on a fancy food processor.
Although I sadly do not have one of these in my kitchen, every time I’m cooking with someone who has one, I always volunteer to chop everything. This is the absolute best vegetable chopper I’ve ever used because it has different attachments and a container attached to the chopper. You can collect everything in one place and don’t have to clean cutting boards or knives when you’re done. I’ll admit, I did struggle a bit at first, but TikTok taught me that you actually just smack it to chop. Sounds crazy, but I swear that’s the secret!
Everyone is on the air fryer trend now. I’ve even started to notice that many of my frozen foods have oven, microwave, and air fryer directions on the packages. I use my air fryer so often that cleaning it became an unfortunate part of my routine. Then, I discovered these air fryer basket liners, which make clean-up way easier. I prefer these dishwasher-safe silicone ones, but if you want an even easier cleanup, you can try single-use liners.
At an early age, I was taught to cover whatever I microwave with a paper towel so that my food didn’t splatter all over the place. Seems simple enough! Until the paper towel falls into my bowl of soup or falls off, and there’s soup everywhere anyway. My fiancé recently introduced me to these microwave food covers, and they’ve saved me from cleaning up many soup explosions. My favorite thing about these ones is that they flatten for easy storage, so they don’t take up a lot of space, and you can store them in any drawer or cabinet.
If you live in an apartment, then you know the tiny freezer struggle. There may be an ice maker inside the freezer, but the bin takes up half of your valuable freezer space. Since iced beverages are a core food group for many of us, there’s a high chance you always need ice in your apartment. This countertop ice maker is all over TikTok (with good reason) and is the greatest invention for us drink girlies. This one can make up to 26 POUNDS of ice per day, so you will never run out of ice again.
I feel like Tupperware lids are the socks of the kitchen. You go to grab a container and lid for your leftovers, and not a single lid fits the container you need. The great thing about food storage containers is that they’re usually stackable, making them easy to store, but the lids are always the worst. I found that getting a lid organizer made my cabinet tidier, allowed me to keep track of my lids, and made it easier for me to quickly grab the right one every time.
Similar to my old Tupperware cabinet, my pots and pans cabinet was a mess. When my fiancé and I moved in together, we had many similar pots, pans, and lids, and we weren’t ready to part with any of them. To keep it organized, we invested in these racks to put inside our cabinets. They make it much easier to find the right-sized pan and the matching cover.
There is nothing in the kitchen that can’t be cleaned with a Scrub Daddy. Dishes? Check. Stovetop? Check. Countertop? Check. These sponges and scrubbers are perfect for cleaning everything without scratching my sensitive dishes, and they are SO cute. Did I just order the Halloween shapes as I’m writing this article? Yes, yes, I did. Also, if you’re not following Scrub Daddy on TikTok, you’re missing out on some of the best content on the internet.