Martha Stewart's Clever Paper Towel Hack Keeps Kitchen Essentials Nice & Organized

If preparing dinner on a weeknight can get chaotic, it only multiplies when you're hosting guests for the evening. There's an endless amount of tasks to ensure everything runs smoothly, from planning the menu to picking out the perfect table decor. One of the biggest ways to help make those dinner parties less stressful is to keep the kitchen organized. Instead of wasting time searching through cabinets and drawers, all of your essentials should be in their place and ready to go. Martha Stewart shared a brilliant trick on YouTube for organizing cloth napkins — a common must-have for special meals. What makes it even more interesting is that it involves using an empty paper towel roll.

Unfortunately, a large percentage of cardboard and paper that gets tossed out ends up in the landfill instead of being recycled. As an alternative, you can repurpose a paper towel tube into a handy napkin organizer. If you are putting forth the effort of using cloth napkins, it's ideal that they're wrinkle-free. However, if you jam folded ones into a drawer, you might pull them out looking the opposite. Stewart's hack involves ironing your cloth napkins beforehand, then using empty tubes to keep them all rolled up. Not only will they come out smooth, but they'll stay organized, too.

It's a good idea to go through your napkins prior to trying Martha Stewart's trick. Place ones you don't think you'll ever use in a donation bag, and make a pile of any that should be tossed. There are also creative ways to repurpose old cloth napkins as well! Next, sort your remaining napkins and keep track of how many you have of each kind. Wipe out the drawer so it's nice and fresh. Finally, iron all of the cloth napkins that you're keeping, then set them in neat stacks on a table. It's now time to get them rolled up using the paper towel tubes.

Simply set a tube at the edge of one of the stacks and start rolling it up. You should then have a tidy roll of cloth napkins that will stay crease-free. For an added bonus, wrap a piece of paper around the roll and jot down how many it contains. That way, you can quickly choose which napkins will work best for your amount of guests. After all of your stacks are rolled up, you can sort them by patterns, colors, seasons, or any way that seems best. You could also keep together the ones that you know you'll grab for most.

Lastly, set your rolls inside your drawer (labels up) so that they are beautifully organized. The next time you have a special dinner that calls for cloth napkins, it'll be a breeze to grab what you need, and you won't be pulling out the ironing board right as your guests arrive. You could also try out the trick for runners and placemats for additional organization.