How To Declutter Your Kitchen

 

The kitchen is the central hub of any house.  It's where people gather, cook, eat, and sort things out from their daily lives.  Because of this, the kitchen can tend to be an area that gets cluttered and not just on the counters, but inside the pantries and drawers as well.  Decluttering the kitchen is something I do every year and every season.  Today's post is going to walk you through how to declutter your own kitchen.


Empty Out

You can start by sections like food storage as one project, cooking supplies as another, fridge and freezer as another, and then counter tops as it's own section.  The first and most important step is to empty everything out.  This allows you to see everything you have and what you are working with.  It's usually wise to declutter counter tops as the first step since most everything is already sitting out, then it also leaves you space to place everything you empty out from other categories.  

 

Categorize

This is my favorite step because it's easy to do.  Place like items together.  If you're working through your food storage areas like pantries and cupboards, this is where you want to group items by the category that makes the most sense.  Spices together, baking mixes together, and lunch packing items in the same area.  Categorizing also lets you see how much of a certain item or category you have which is extremely helpful for the next step of purging.  When you categorize your fridge and freezer, group items such as frozen veggies together, frozen dinners together, and fresh produce together. 

 

Purge

Now is where you really start making progress.  First, discard anything that is broken beyond repair, stained or ruined, or expired (food items).  That automatically gets rid of a bunch of stuff in most cases.  But then you should always go through and purge each category.  Do you really need 8 cooking spoons or can you pick your favorite 3?  Are you really going to use the cookie cutters that are still in the packaging or can you donate them? 

 

Clean

Before putting anything away, make sure you clean every surface and every nook and cranny. Wipe down cabinets inside and out, clean your refrigerator, scrub your stove and oven, vacuum crumbs out of drawers. 

 

Put Away

Now it's time to put everything back in a neat and orderly fashion so that in the future it's easy to find things and put them away.  Make sure everything goes in a logical place.  People tend to want things in close reach but that just creates more clutter and is it really that big of a deal to take ten extra seconds to reach into a drawer instead of pulling something off the counter where it's been collecting dust? 

 

Maintain

Now all you have to do is maintain the order.  Don't buy excess of things.  Shop your own pantry first. Meal plan and use what you have on hand to create meals before the supplies go bad.   

Each year you may need to do another mini declutter but when you get the initial big one out of the way, the hardest work is done for good! Just don't ever let it get too messy again! 

Make sure to clean and tidy your kitchen every evening before bed so you wake up the next day and have a clean space to work with.  Wipe down counters daily and keep a running stock list of items you have and will run out of soon so you can add them to your grocery list. 

When's the last time you decluttered your kitchen? 

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