How to Organize a Cup Cabinet

INSIDE: Learn how to organize a cup cabinet with simple, effective tips. Maximize space, reduce clutter, and keep your kitchen neat and functional with smart storage solutions.

UPDATES – There are updates at the bottom of the post to show you new ideas but don’t skip the top, it gives you the foundation of the organization!!!!!

Ever open your cup cabinet and cover your face for fear of what will hit you? Me either, I was asking for a friend……..

Today I decided I would finish up the cabinet organization because it felt so good to get the others done! It was time to organize our cup cabinet!

Our cup cabinet makes absolutely no sense and we have things falling on our heads when we get the water bottle we want!

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It’s a hazard really!

Part 2 of the problem – the lids are all located in a drawer behind the cabinet…the drawer is not ANY neater than the cabinet. This needs to be fixed ASAP!

Figuring out if there were matching cups and lids became my new mission. BUT – as I got started, I panicked a little. When you start with all of these messes, organization seems soooooooo far away! I can do it. And so can YOU!

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As always, start here:

1 – PURGE!

As always, you should start with removing everything from your cabinet and lay it out so you can see your mess stuff. I matched every cup to its top.

Any cup that didn’t have a lid…trash. Any lid that didn’t have a cup….trash. I found 3 warped cups and lid combos….trash.

Man, that PURGE felt amazing! Just knowing the pile was smaller made the rest of the process seem less overwhelming.

And I decided that – If you like it, you should leave the lids on it… (sing in your best Beyonce voice)

Leaving the lids on meant eliminating a messy drawer!!! But will they fit in the cabinet like that? Hmmm, I will have to come up with a solution for that. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

2 – CLEAN

Wipe all drawers and cabinets with Mrs. Meyers thus removing all dirt, grime, and crumbs! Organization is one thing, but cleaning is a completely different feeling. Knowing that you have taken the time to clean an area of our home that never gets cleaned should make it feel like its worth the effort.

3 – Organize

Keep like things together, in the cup cabinet that meant coffee cups together, travel cups together….and so on.

For this to work in my cabinets, I needed to move the shelves. So….I measured the cups for height and moved the shelves accordingly.

****UPDATE 6/2024: As I’m sure all of you have, we have accumulated tall water bottles (AKA Stanley, Juggy, HydroFlask or whatever other trendy things peppy people use to drink water). These do not fit in the cabinets and I’m not moving the shelves again, so I purchased this cool little contraption to put just below this cabinet on the counter top. Here is an updated pic of the cabinet.

***Ok, reality check – I have another update – 8/2026 we have too many of these things to sit on the counter and my cup cabinet needs help again.

Here is the current state of the cabinets:

We have come a long way from that top picture. Kids with cups with lids and straws so things don’t spill – to now – kids with cups with lids and straws cause it’s cool to have a Stanley in every color?? Oh and I also figured out that Stanley’s keep things colder longer………but can’t give up my Yeti!!

Throat clearing, I also realized that I save cups we gather while on vacations because I think it will get used again and remind us of that trip. The reality is – I wasted space in my suitcase!

Next, you will see my attempt to hide water bottles behind mixing bowls, maybe in an attempt to save space but………do you know what actually happened?

We bought more because I forgot where I put the others………

I didn’t want to write a whole new post about this refresh because I want to be transparent. We have to change things regularly to make this chaos work. Can’t keep the same organization when the family is ever changing, right?

The next few pictures will be of me following my own advice and steps 1-3 above – in all its painful glory!

1 – Purge

2 – Clean

3 – Organize

Happy Organizing,