5 Things To Purge From Your Kitchen
It is amazing to see the amount of stuff that accumulates in the kitchen. The kitchen really is the center of many homes. The kitchen was a huge undertaking during my personal journey toward simplifying my home. If you are on a similar journey or just want to take a few small steps towards less clutter, these 5 things are a good place to start.
- Tame the Tupperware Beast – We have all heard it a million times but it’s time to finally do something about it. The loads of mismatched lids and containers need your attention. This surprisingly did not take as long as I thought it would. Start by removing your favorite ones. The ones you use weekly that are in good shape with fitting lids can go immediately to the keep pile. Next start matching up lids and containers. Throw away anything without a match. Now trash anything that is discolored, cracked, or has an ill-fitting lid. The last step is the hardest, decide how many you actually need out of the containers left. This number varies based on the family. Consider how often you eat leftovers, what sizes work best for your family, and what logically fits in the space provided. Do you only use them once or twice a year? Could you use a freezer bag for those times instead? If you had to buy new ones tomorrow, would you purchase these items again? Wash the ones that you have decided to keep and organize into a larger container that fits in your cabinet. This keeps them from going everywhere inside your cabinets.
- Some of These Things are not like the Others – It is amazing how much stuff ends up in crazy places. This happens even more often when you have children. This can be time-consuming to handle but the extra work space in your kitchen is worth it. The weirdest thing we found was a decorative ink pen from Disney World inside a punch bowl. We relocated the ink pen to the desk and got rid of the punch bowl. We obviously hadn’t been using it, lol.
- Food, Food, and more Food – Take a day to pull everything from your pantry, cabinets, or anywhere else you keep non-refrigerated food. Check expiration dates and throw out everything expired to start. Go through everything else with honesty. Have anything in there that you will not eat? We got rid of a bag of candy our girls were never going to eat. They still had tons of Halloween candy hanging around in the pantry. To make getting rid of those things easier either give them to somebody who you know will eat them or donate them. Next go through your refrigerator and freezer doing the same thing. Now make a meal plan including all of your food. Depending on the amount of stuff that was harboring in your kitchen you may save a ton of money on groceries in the next couple weeks.
- Weird appliances – We all have them. I received the majority of mine as gifts but my husband is also responsible for bringing some of the odd items in. I made sure that my whole family was gathered around the table as we went through things. I set the small appliances on the table one by one asking if anybody truly used this product. The answers were shocking to all of us. There were some things that we all thought somebody else wanted and they didn’t use it at all.
- Bags – Do you have a huge pile of bags in your kitchen…maybe under your kitchen sink? Only keep the amount of grocery bags that you will actually use and recycle the rest. Do you use reusable grocery bags? Shouldn’t they be in your car instead of your kitchen?
When you are done, take the time to organize what is left. There are many options available to keep the things that you use orderly.