Decluttering My Kitchen

The organizing books I've been reading lately and Org Junkie's Monthly Organizing Round-up inspired me to work on my kitchen.

As far as organizing goes, I think my kitchen works fairly well. There's a place for everything and everything is in it's place (or the refrigerator or the dish drain).

But it's been making me a little crazy lately. So I set to work organizing my kitchen Friday afternoon.

I emptied most of my cupboards onto the counters.

I put like items together (all the platters in one stack, plastic bowls in another, etc.).

Then I looked each piece over and decided what I use every week, what I use monthly, what I use seasonally, and what I haven't used since we moved into our home 5 years ago.

Anything I don't use weekly and monthly (or the current season) would be stored in the basement on utility shelves and anything I haven't used for months would move to the Salvation Army thrift store. = )


As I decided to give away an item, I placed it in a waiting box.

Then I evaluated my cabinets. I'm barely 5 feet tall so anything high in my cupboards requires climbing on a chair to retrieve.

Annoyance! I made a plan to put occasional items in the high spots and regular items in the low spots.

After evaluating where to put everything I filled the cabinets again only putting back items I wanted in the kitchen.

I am very pleased with the outcome!

The decluttering process was not an easy one. I had to throw away several items. Like a plastic bowl with a cracked rim. It's still usable but the crack aggravates me like crazy.

I used the Irritation Test. If an item annoys me then why keep it just because it's still usable. After all, I rarely use it because of the irritation. At least that's what I told the guilt that came when I thought about throwing away a "perfectly good" bowl.

One thing I realized through this process is how few of my kitchen items are used on a regular basis. Over the past five years I've complained innumerable times about how little cabinet space I have but now I realize I (mostly) have enough space, I just had too much stuff I never used.

I also had to declutter the utility shelves in my basement. I should mention that several years ago I worked as a Pampered Chef consultant. Thus I have a lot of really nice kitchen equipment. It was a little difficult passing some of it along to the Salvation Army (like an apple corer, microwave cooker, and v-shaped cutter) but I've never used two of those items in my own home so there wasn't much point in keeping them.

Once the utility shelves were decluttered I moved everything left out on the counters in the kitchen down to the basement.

Again, I'm very pleased with the outcome. What tips do you have for organizing kitchen cabinets?