How to Organize Kids’ Dishes

Organizing is a struggle on its own, but organizing with kids can take it to a whole new level! Eek!

Since we’ve started the Abby Organizes YouTube channel, we’ve gotten a lot of questions from readers/viewers asking how to organize certain spaces, and today I wanted to address one of the questions I’ve gotten most frequently: How do you organize your kids’ dishes?!

I give my quick answer and explain our system in the video below.

How to Organize Kids’ Dishes

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.

Kids’ dishes can definitely be a challenge to keep neat and tidy– especially if the kiddos are helping to set the table or put their items away! Let’s take a peek inside of the cabinet that holds our kids’ dishes, and I’ll share a few of the things that have helped it work for us.

We keep the kids’ dishes in a bottom cabinet in the island so the boys can easily reach them whenever they need them.

I originally just had the plates, bowls, and cups sitting directly on this sliding shelf, but I actually found that since there was so much space on it, the dishes were more likely to get unruly and unorganized.

To fix this problem, I simply popped in a basket that I already had to create some “boundaries” for the dishes, and since they’re now a perfect fit, it’s easier for us to keep them neat and tidy.

We are already out of the sippy cup phase at our house, but if you still have sippy cups around, you could easily add a second basket to hold the cups and lids.

Storing our dishes in a basket also keeps us from acquiring more dishes than we actually need and creating clutter. I know this is the designated spot for the boys’ items, so if I buy something new, it would have to be able to fit in here. Less is more!

Another thing I do is try to just have one brand of plate, one brand of bowl, etc., or at least ones that will nest easily inside of one another. This helps everything to stack up easily without falling over and making a mess all the time. Most of our kids’ dishes are from IKEA– they’re fun and bright and not very expensive at all.

I then keep a second bin on the bottom shelf, and it holds the boys’ lunch boxes so everything that belongs to them is in this one cabinet, and they always know where to find it.

That’s it! It’s a simple system but it has been working well for us, so I’ll stick with it!

If you’re looking for more kitchen organization inspiration, you can also get more details about our current kitchen organization in these posts:

Our Organized Kitchen Tour

5 Tips for Creating a Beautifully Organized Pantry

How to Organize Under the Kitchen Sink

How to Organize the Refrigerator

How to Organize Food Storage Containers

How to Create an Organized Junk Drawer

Working with a smaller kitchen space? These posts about the small-but-organized kitchen in our townhouse may be helpful:

How to Organize a Small Kitchen

How to Organize a Small Refrigerator

How to Organize a Kitchen Pantry

[Psssttt… Don’t miss our top 100 tips for organizing every single room in your house!]

Let me know in the comments if you’d like to see more reader questions in the future! And if you have an organization question of your own, feel free to leave that in the comments as well! 

Happy Organizing!

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.