Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Kitchen Decluttering: How to live with less and love what you have more!

Well, I'm back! So good to be in the YB Cafe again. In the past three months, ManO, my dearly beloved, had a stroke. Papa Jack, ManO's dad, suffered from a different kind of stroke. And I broke my foot. Big sigh.

Years ago, a friend advised me, "When life gets out of control, declutter!"  Point being, clutter is something you can control. You throw away stuff that stresses you out. You see concrete results. I ultimately threw away 24 bags of trash, took 40 bags to thrift store and four truckloads to the dump over 40 Days thanks to a wonderful blogger who posted about her own journey, 40 Bags in 40 Days.  Not only did I lose stuff, I gained muscle mass with all that carrying to the car and down from the attic and lost a lot of that out of control feeling.

Nothing gets more cluttered than my kitchen. It was the job I dreaded the most but I learned a lot.

1) A clean counter is one less obstacle to cooking...unless you don't want to mess it up.

A clean counter is a thing of beauty.
2)  You don't need a whole cabinet of coffee mugs and tea cups. A shelf will do.
The thrift store got a lot of freebie mugs I collected over the years. I keep the good stuff.
3)  With the advent of virtual cooking sites like Allrecipes.com and specialty allergy sites, my cookbooks were woefully out of date. But I kept ones from ManO's and my early days for sentimental reasons. That's also the reason I kept my Laura Ingalls Wilder Cookbook. Pure sentiment. I am not going to be roasting a pig's tail any time soon.

Yep, they are stained and ripped but cookbooks on the top row and middle kept us alive as newlyweds.
4) If you don't keep every dull knife, melted plastic measuring spoon, broken peeler, etc., you have a lot more room in your drawers for what you use every day.

5) Are you really keeping your important kitchen implements in the right place?  I had stuffed my collection of kitchen towels and oven mitts in a tiny drawer. It was constantly getting stuck when I opened it. I had a bigger drawer only half full of sandwich bags, plastic wraps and parchment paper. Off to a shelf on my pantry they went and voila! Plenty of space for my linens and such. Some folks move their utensils to a crock on the counter by the stove.  Others use a hanging rack.  Whatever you choose, make the most of your space.

So what about you? Have you done a kitchen declutter lately, ever? What is the one thing you just can't throw out for sentimental reasons?     


      

21 comments:

  1. Been decluttering a lot but lots more to go. Parted with tons of stuff but cookbooks are hard for me. Also keeping my teacups lol! Glad you're back
    Susanna

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    1. Yay! Glad you kept those cookbooks.

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    2. I DID get rid of a bunch but just ones that I added later on a whim and nothing in them really grabbed me - others I don't think I'd part with plus I brought down a bunch my mom had...never know what you'll find in those church/community type cookbooks plus both of us - plus her mom my grandma- loved to sit and read through them and those are good memories
      Susanna

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  2. JULIEEEEEEE! So glad to see you back!!

    And inspired by you, I decluttered by kitchen. (Truthfully, I was also repainting cabinets and there's nothing like taking off the doors to your cabinets to make you aware of how bad things are inside.) But now I have about 8 empty drawers. Completely and totally empty. I put a few pens in one. Some paper pads in another. A few batteries in another.

    Not sure what to do with them now! But it's SO GOOD to be able to find what I need, pass on what I didn't (13 vases... why??) and to have a more peaceful cooking experience.

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    1. A more peaceful cooking experience. So true! I have a feeling Edna could give you some advice on what to put in those drawers!

      And I bet your thrift store loves you.

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    2. I was envious you actually have 8 drawers but just counted mine and that's what I have though one is really narrow - not sure why they put it there actually! guess an emergency potholder station or something. well there are 2 HUGE drawers under my stovetop- I put pots/pans in those and 2 regular ones on top of those side by side. the other drawers are at the opposite end of this alley kitchen though started using the 2 in the worst place for tea lights for my tea, junk, and may toss the junk and use for potholders for the toaster oven I use that's on that small section of cabinet - think that was put there to keep the fridge from being on the outside edge!
      Susanna

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  3. Glad to see you back Julie! And glad that you kept the Little House Cookbook. It really doesn't go with the cookbooks, but with the historical books. Thanks how I keep mine three editions to justify their existance...:)

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  4. Good point, Piper. I need to re-organize. And my other cookbooks are history too. Personal history but history none the less.

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  5. Exactly! Keep them with the history books! And you've been reorganizing pretty well. I still have this closet I need to see to next to my office desk...*sigh*

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    1. my will probably be a bathroom reader LOL! actually it was my mom's but think I got it for her and the rediscovered writings book goes there though I've been known to be into a section and walk away with it to the bedroom LOL!
      Susanna

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  6. gosh now I'm re-thinking the cookbook shelf- walked over and started looking and trying to figure out WHY I'm keeping some other than some have good pictures. the entire top shelf (haven't rearranged in a looonnng time) is full of well meaning's weight watchers cookbooks from my long time on/off again affair with weight watchers (think I scanned at least 4 points systmes and bought from older ones LOL) then it's easy to see my 'phases' or 'intended phases' soups, vegetarian, vegan (that was a joke seriously could probably manage a few vegetarian meals but not more than a snack probably for vegan.. but darn the recipes and stuff sounded pretty good so who knows!), top secret recipes with todd Wilbur (yes I was gonna re-create all kinds of restaurant masterpieces til I saw the ingredients list...but I still like looking through t hem and dreaming about it!), a few from when I was a kid (an aunt bought me a betty crocker kids cookbook and I wanted so badly to cook stuff from it but my mom said no one would eat it and unfortunately she knew that the hard way which is probably why the 3 of us always read the cookbooks instead of using them), slowcooker stuff and , of all things, my 'grilling' phase cookbooks which is a total joke since I've grilled maybe 2x in my entire life (sigh..I'm afraid of the flame plus it takes too long to get the charcoal right and I'm scared to change the dohickies on the gas grills...), the church and community cookbooks I adore looking through (and seeing whenwomen actually had their own friggin' names instead of mrs Charles so and so..sheesh) even my own mother put mrs jt smith on so many recipes! and the ones my mom got me because she liked - one woman wrote the recipe column in the local paper and my mom loved her style - so did I. we ended up with 3 cookbooks - 2 with one husband who passed (think heart attack) so needless to say the 3rd had a new hubby and, um, healthier recipes which we sorta giggled overtogether saying how we thought those recipes were too good to be true but knowing it wasn't funny for real...the bargain stuff I couldn't resist when I was in 'cookbook acquision syndrome' and the ones I thought I should have - you know the betty crocker stuff, joy of cooking, fannie farmer what's her name..think I did skip Julia child.then the ethnic stuff I thought I'd be a whiz at because I had the cookbook...just not cut out for stir fry and Mexican is too hard - good Mexican right here in town...and some things I was honestly better off not knowing what they contained...and the diabetic and other 'healthy' cookbooks - guess for some reason I felt better knowing they were there and maybe think that IF I ever have company they'll see them and think I'm healthy in spite of how chubby I look...oh a nd the certain publisher cookbooks like a bunch of clearance books from taste of home (anyone with these MUST know what they're doing right? bring the country and home into my home by having the cookbooks lining an e ntire shelf)..and the gooseberry though I DO love reading through these! just love these things with the simple sketches!

    yep and that's just the cookbooks left plus my mom's I haven't brought in from the garage yet- pioneer woman (yes best thing I bought my mom LOL and so glad I didn't buy one for myself since I now have hers). I actually dumped a bunch of 'whim' cookbooks so guess I should go through these others too and see how much space I really need to assign for cookbooks

    Susanna

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  7. Gggrrroooaaannn.....

    Hubby and I got home from our trip east with a van full of stuff (emptying out his mom's house in preparation for its sale), only to find our children had cheerfully recluttered everything while we were gone.

    And, you guessed it, everyone leaves for work and school in the morning, and I get to tackle the clutter.

    The problem? I have two deadlines coming up, a potential third, and VBS to plan.

    Whenever you start feeling out of control, Julie, you're welcome to come here with your trash/donation bags!

    (Actually, I'm tackling it. Slowly but surely. Ten items at a time.)

    Your kitchen looks wonderful, by the way. And welcome back to the cafe :)

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    1. Jan, we had so much stuff from when my mother died and when my inlaws moved into a retirement home. It took a while for me to disassociate the clutter from the memories. Glad you are back.

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  8. Congratulations, Julie! I watched on FB as you did this through Lent, and I felt so convicted!! LOL I should have done it with you. I need to desperately.

    Maybe the first thing I'll tackle is my recipe corner and a box of cookbooks that haven't even had a home since we moved here. I've kept them in a moving box. (sigh)

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    1. Missy, you especially have to deal with those Moving Day boxes. It is amazing how we don't open boxes until years and go huh. I discovered our first set of dishes from three decades ago. I thought I had given them to the thrift store years ago.

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  9. Also meant to say welcome back, Julie! We've missed you.

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  10. Welcome back, Julie!!! I love your kitchen. It's gorgeous!

    I'm laughing at the idea of the shelves though, because we're still at the 20 coffee cup, 30 kid cups stage.... and we have mason jar glasses and frappe cups for Fancy Glass Wednesday... and I won't even tell you what lives on my counters. Something must keep the bugs company, right????j

    But this is sage advice! And as I attack the closets one-by-one, I'm taking this advice to heart... the kitchen, well... that one is the chronic-busy-crazy soul of this old house, so that one's going to wait awhile!

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  11. Amen, Ruthy! When I was sorting cups I thought, "six kids, two adults.... and forty relatives a few times a month". Forget about the homeschool book club meetings, the mom get-togethers, and the 110F "let's all get in the sprinkler days" where children seem to appear from nowhere.
    Someday I will have five mugs on a shelf. For now... It's a whole cabinet. :)

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  12. Oh you guys! :-) If I had to include my Nannie's tea cup collection in the dining room and my grandmother Hattie's cups and my mugs that go with my corelle....:-).

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  13. I just had to stop by to say once again that you own my dream kitchen. I think if I had your kitchen I would just sit around and admire it all day long. I think cooking would also be sheer perfection.

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