One of the best tips we give our clients is to buy things that can serve multiple purposes, like an ottoman with storage inside. Here are some of our favorite kitchen items that can serve multiple purposes and start to earn that drawer space that they’re taking up.

1. Parchment Paper – Parchment paper can double as a shelf liner. Try placing it in your fridge to help quickly clean up messy spills. It can also be used similarly when baking anything in the oven (cookies or chicken) to leave your Pyrex dishes nice and clean. No elbow grease needed!

2. Strainer – Use your strainer as an egg separator or as a seed catcher. Squeeze your lemon over the strainer and let the juice flow through while trapping the seeds. Genius right?!

3. Lemon – You’ve possibly heard this one before…lemon can be used for a whole slew of things, including an all-natural cleaner. Disinfect your surfaces by rubbing a slice of lemon across it, leaving the acid to kill the bacteria.

4. Wine bottle – Wine can serve many purposes in our lives, but today it’s all about the bottle. If you’re making cookies, use that bottle as a rolling pin and forget about finding a long enough space to keep that tool stored. Just make sure you thoroughly clean it and remove the label first.

5. Muffin Tins – Muffin tins can contain more than just your muffin tops (is there a clothing version of this too?). Try using a muffin tin as a junk drawer organizer, using each space to store small, around the house items such as paper clips, push pins and rubber bands.

6. Grater – Aside from cheese, your grater can slice things such as onions, garlic, ginger and even help slice butter before baking.

7. Egg Slicer – Normally, I would say you don’t need something so specific to slice an egg, but in this case (if you already have one) it can be used to slice much more, including strawberries, avocados and mushrooms.

8. Ice Cube Tray – Ever find yourself with excess herbs and no recipes to use them in the near future? Rather than wasting them, try freezing your herbs in olive oil (sectioned out per ice cube slot). This way the next time you’re ready to cook with your fresh rosemary you can whip it out of the freezer and stick it straight onto the skillet.

9. Scoopers – Think about your ice cream scooper and melon ballers. Both can be used to scoop cake batter into muffin tins without making a mess and to create uniformly sized meatballs. Try using your melon baller to core an apple by scooping out the seeds.

10. Pizza Cutter – Ditch the pizza, chop a salad instead! You can also use this sucker to cut up small herbs. Easy peasy, eh?

No need to clutter up your kitchen, always ask yourself if your kitchen items serve multiple purposes before binge shopping at HomeGoods. Got any that we missed? Let us know!