A kitchen is the busiest room in a house. At any given time, you may be cooking, baking, prepping, cleaning, or jotting down a shopping list. Make all of those tasks easier and more time-efficient with our organizing ideas. Most take just minutes and will save you hours each week.

Yes, iPads are sleek, but the holders for these tablets are often surprisingly clunky, not to mention pricey. Try an almost-invisible, inexpensive acrylic plate stand to prop up the tablet on your desk or kitchen counter, keeping it easily accessible with minimal fuss.

Deluxe acrylic plate stand, 8 inches, containerstore.com.

Whether you use one crock or several, it's wise to have essential tools in arm's reach when you're at the stove. A cart provides storage where you need it. Martha keeps ladles, whisks, pastry brushes, wooden spoons, and flexible spatulas in separate containers on her cart.

Using a rack will save so much space in your cabinets -- and make your pots and pans easier to find. Martha hangs hers above the stationary island near the range.

Decide what you want to keep in your islands, and plan the space accordingly. Upright steel slats provide perfect spots for heavy baking sheets. Martha also has drawers for aprons and utensils; deep shelves for platters, books, and pet supplies; and small cubbies for towels and other items.

Shallow drawers lined with tarnish-controlling flannel provide the right environment for silver. The pieces rest in a single layer on the fabric -- no dividers or stacking necessary.

Martha considered every corner of her kitchen in Bedford, New York, right down to the shelving supports. "I like 'bird's beak' supports, an old carpentry style with notches that let shelves slide in and out," Martha says. No holes, no hardware -- the look is streamlined.

Corral items on open shelves using nice-looking containers. These baskets add warmth and texture to the room; the gray trays are simple and stylish. Add adhesive pads on the bottom so they slide smoothly.

If you have more than one pet, it's important to be organized. Martha devotes pantry space to dry food, which she transfers from the bulky bags into stackable airtight plastic containers. Labels are crucial for keeping everything straight. Bowls and cans are stacked nearby in see-through bins.

Refrigerator door space is prime kitchen real estate. Free it up by moving a few necessities to a turntable, where they’ll still be easy to grab.

Position a collapsible wine rack along a lower shelf to keep bottles on their sides. This one holds 10 and is modular, letting you configure it to fit inside your fridge. 

Keep delicate foodstuffs out of harms way by giving them shelter under shelf risers. Go for vinyl-coated models to avoid rust spots. 

To prevent small goods from getting lost in the shuffle, give them their own room with a view with below-shelf hanging organizers.

Pastry bags, biscuit cutters, icing tips, and frosting combs: Everything is easily accessible in clear boxes.

Having a variety of skewers and picks is handy for hors d'oeuvres. Bundle each kind with a rubber band or a snippet of string.

Save counter space by using your drawers wisely. In-drawer wooden knife trays are more space effcient than a bulky knife block.

The kitchen is command central in most homes, so keep basic first-aid supplies there. Martha arranges items in little containers.

When washing dishes, use a plastic bin for soaking or soaping to save water. The plastic is also more forgiving than a hard sink should you drop a dish. When you're washing a lot of very fragile items by hand, such as crystal stemware, lining the sink with a terry towel also does the trick. Keep dish soap in a clear plastic pump bottle by the sink.

Martha collects vintage enamel holders, originally used for soap and sponges in bathrooms. She mounts them by sinks to hold sponges, brushes, and scrubbers.

Martha's cats have their own buffet in the servery. Several dishes are lined up in a long tray, which catches any spills so food doesn't end up on the floor.

Baskets designed to hold fishing tackle or to hook onto a bicycle's handlebars come ready-made with holes in the back. Hung on a kitchen wall with cup hooks, or on a Peg-Board, they make great receptacles for unwieldy kitchen tools or fruits and vegetables that don't require refrigeration.

No one will guess that this sleek, modern wine rack is made of PVC pipe from a hardware store. The design is completely flexible, so you can create one to fit inside any shelf or cabinet and paint it to suit your own decor.

Storing saucers is no problem: They nest neatly. The teacups, on the other hand, always threaten to topple over. Here's how Martha handles them: placed cup over saucer, in tidy stacks of no more than three or four that suit them to a T (or a teacup).

Clear up the clutter and make the most of your countertops by using a cake stand to hold olive oil, salt, pepper, and other frequently used seasonings. The stand makes it easy to find and use these ingredients while you cook, and gives you space to arrange other herbs and spices around the base of the pedestal.

Plastic bags seem to multiply, even if you try to take fewer of them from stores. Make sure you reuse them; it's easy when they're in a handy holder that matches your kitchen decor.

Their sleek glass and porcelain rods long gone, enameled, ceramic, and metal towel-bar supports often turn up at flea markets. Attractive -- but what can you do with them? Show off the hardware in another room. Coordinate a pair of the supports with your kitchen's color scheme or style, and suspend copper pipe from which to hang pots and pans.

When transferring dry ingredients to glass jars, use an envelope if you don't have a small funnel nearby. Cut a generous triangle from one end of the envelope, then snip tip off corner, and open into a cone. For large amounts, use big manila envelopes.

Airtight (well-sealed) containers made of plastic or glass let you see quickly how much of one ingredient you have left. These containers also protect dried goods from humidity and pests. Whether they match or not, containers can be displayed on the counter or up on open shelves in attractive ways that can actually decorate a corner of your kitchen.

A few small embellishments to your favorite cookbook can save time and keep things in order while preparing dishes.

Save yourself the early-morning fumble for a measuring spoon by clipping one to your bag of dark roast.

To eliminate the search for the right lid amid an unwieldy stack each time you use your pots and pans, store them neatly: Place a wooden peg rack in a cupboard, and line up the lids vertically between the pegs. You could also attach a graduated rack to the door. Whatever you do, arrange lids from smallest to largest, with their partner pans close by.

Storing sharp knives in a drawer makes for less-cluttered counters and a safer kitchen.

Here's a new job for photo protectors: Use them to keep recipe cards organized and free of spills and spatters in the kitchen. Protectors are available at office-supply stores and come in a variety of sizes; choose ones to accommodate your recipe cards taken from magazines as well as handwritten ones received from friends. Store the pages in a three-ring binder.

Storing baking sheets, cutting boards, and sturdy platters upright on kitchen shelves frees space and keeps you from having to lift a heavy stack when you need only one item. Create dividers for them using tension curtain rods. Buy rods to fit the space, and position pairs of them at intervals. Twist to tighten.

With two boards, you can turn a shelf into a wine rack.

In your kitchen cabinet or pantry, use S hooks to hold an inventory list -- so you know what you have, as well as how much you paid per unit, for the sake of future comparison shopping. The hooks can also keep other necessities handy: scissors and a box cutter for opening packages, a funnel for decanting liquids, and a scoop for dry goods.

Bamboo steamers have holes that let air in and out to cook food uniformly. For just that reason, these containers are also well suited to storing onions, garlic, and shallots, which require ventilation and should not be refrigerated. Place all three in a single unit, or if you use lots of all of them, keep each kind in its own section of a stackable steamer. Place the steamer on a tray or plate to catch flaking skins, and set it on the counter for quick access.

Hanging a dish towel from an oven door makes sense -- the towel is always at the ready, and the oven's warmth quickly dispels dampness. Here's a way to improve on the idea, keeping the towel from slipping off.

Magnetic bulletin boards are handy, but the color options are limited. Make your own in a hue that matches your kitchen.

Increase cupboard space by using a serving tray as a shelf divider.

You'll need a tray almost as wide as the cupboard's depth. Cut a piece of nonskid shelf liner to fit the tray so glasses stay put and rims are protected. Place large glasses upside down on the shelf, set tray on top, and arrange smaller glasses upside down on top of tray.

Unlabeled plastic bags and their mysterious contents are bound to get the cold shoulder in the freezer. With our convenient, easy-to-read labels, you'll never wonder which batch of stock to use first or if those frozen peaches are still in their prime.

Storing knives properly helps them to maintain their edges. Here are some ways to make sure your knives stay their sharpest.

Keep pantry staples organized with a set of glass storage jars customized with etched lettering.

Don't let kitchen rags and dishwashing gloves clutter the sink area. Instead, hang them from hooks screwed to the inside of a cabinet door, where the items can stay out of sight as they dry.

Bring a favorite flowerpot indoors, turn it upside down, and you have a charming way to keep your kitchen string neat and accessible.

Choose a clean pot with a bright glaze, and place it over the ball of twine, threading the end through the drainage hole. Pull out the string and snip lengths for tying herb bouquets or trussing a chicken. Try this idea with wayward balls of twine and cord in your crafts closet, too.

Retrieving a jar of honey from the back of a crowded cabinet can be awkward. For a simple fix, gather the small items you store on the shelf onto a spare baking tray, then treat it like a drawer, carefully sliding it in and out for easy access. The pan will also catch drips, speeding cleanup.