Declutter November mini-challenge week 3: the kitchen
Our kitchen is just about smallest proper room of our house but is also the most tightly packed: all the usual food, utensils, crockery etc but also the more specialist stuff for our cooking-related hobbies such as John’s wine making and my preserving. I’m sure that’s not an unusual situation for simple living-type people.
At the start of the month, I was thinking about what needs to be in our store cupboard but in order to keep that full and productive, I think I need to sort through our pantries and clear some space: be realistic about what we won’t use at all or something we just need a bit of encouragement to use up (and not replace).
So the mini-challenge: in addition to your one-a-day decluttering, get rid of five extra items from your kitchen. They can be food, tools, pleasantly chintzy but impractically small chicken-shaped egg holders or whatever.
(I’m personally also going to take the opportunity to think about making more space the kitchen – even if it just means moving things to other parts of the house. We’ve got a mini-utility room now and I think more under-the-sink stuff could go down there. And used-once-in-a-blue-moon spare cups etc can go into storage somewhere else. That won’t be as satisfying as just outright getting rid of things but it’ll help us use the kitchen better so will be a step in the right direction.)
What can you get rid of? Can you move anything to somewhere else to make more usable space?
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Taking Stock – May 2015
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Making a little more progress at the allotment
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Allotment, end of round 1 (ding ding)
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Yay, allotment!
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Taking stock – June 2014
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Do it better
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Stitching etc tips from the Knitting & Stitching Show
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No Spend November
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My winter to-do list 2013
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Taking stock: a ‘what I’m up to in my absence’ meme
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Plummy solid square crochet blanket
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Attack of the Crochet Claw
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My low-spend '11: buy less than 12 items of clothing in 2011
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Cold smoking cheese - taste testing the first batch
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Using up the glut: Marrow cake recipe
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How I line dry clothes in winter: my top five tips
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Spicy marrow chutney recipe
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Washing in winter: ideas for reducing laundry?
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Foraging for wild food: do you forage near roads?
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Your favourite fiction books with simple living characters/themes?
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How I spent my Tuesday afternoon
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We *heart* books too (warning: picture heavy post!)
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Portion control
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Baking things that'll last
I did the kitchen last week! I am ahead of the game :)
Oh, my kitchen is way overdue for this! Good idea!
“kitchen overflow” is an excellent concept. we have a few collapsible plastic crates in our cellar which are roughly “things from the kitchen we use noticably less than once per week”. the kitchen has benefitted enormously from the declutterage.
One for tomorrow!
You can’t make me go in there!
My attempts to tidy up are actually leading me to store more stuff in the kitchen, but the stuff was there already, getting in the way. Let me explain…
I keep bottles for re-use. I originally decided that the store room is the best place for these, but to get to the store room I have to go outside, down the steps, and back in again. This is a bit of a pain if I have a large-ish number of bottles to carry (and is it worth it if I only have one or two?) especially if it’s raining and/or dark. As a result, empty bottles have been gradually taking over my kitchen.
I’ve now put an extra shelf in a tall cupboard, which is now filling up with useful bottles. Some of them – brace yourself – are even going in the bin! (The recycling bin, of course).
Nooooooooo! Not the kitchen!! That’s the hardest room of all! As we’ve been ‘decorating’ for over five years now (more of a ‘building site’, tbh), the kitchen is the only room big enough to hold the crates of tools (stacked 6 high), tins of paint (stacked 3 high in 7 piles!!) and all the rest of the sundries you would expect a Dulux shop to stock – my OH owns a decorator’s merchant, although I’m beginning to think he’s confused my kitchen with his warehouse!
I think, to lessen the strain, I’m going to focus on the first couple of mini-challenges (still unachieved and we’re halfway through the month – oops!) :-)
I’m hoping to tackle the kitchen and garden mini challenges this week :) We’ll see how we go! P.S. We have the lid of one of those chicken shaped dish things but in green – my elder daughter hunted it down for me at a jumble sale so I daren’t get rid of it yet!