On Monday I wrote about minimalist kitchens for the people. Running off some inspiration from creating my Minimalist Kitchen pinboard, and tired of the cluttered drawers and poorly laid out appliances in our rental, I did a light paring down of the kitchen here.
Dare I say, it was fun.
It was very easy to identify kitchen tools we didn’t need or use and just tuck them away in a cupboard or drawer. There is a lot of cupboard space in this little kitchen. Far more than we need. Here are a few things that we removed from use:
- kettle: how un-British of us. Neither of us drinks tea frequently and if I ever want a cup I am happy to boil water in the microwave or on the stove.
- kitschy coffee mug and saucer set: prefer the nice white mugs so this rainbow set has been stored away
- coffee maker: I overflowed this machine three times before my UK Nespresso machine arrived. Not so savvy on coffee machines.
- flour, sugar, tea canisters: these can look cute on a windowsill but I rarely find them practical. And these ones weren’t that cute. Buh-bye.
- egg slicer: surprised to find this gadget in a bachelor kitchen.
The microwave was moved so I can do my chopping near the sink and stove. The Nespresso machine is very small and requires the back canister to be filled with water every other day. Switching the microwave and the Nespresso machine gave me more counter space where I needed it. The toaster gets used every other day so it stayed as well.
One thing I realized: it’s easy when it’s not your stuff. It was dead easy to have a critical eye for what we used and didn’t used when I didn’t own the item.
If you’re struggling to let go of things consider just boxing them up and putting them away for a while. If you can live, and live well, without that melon baller for six months it might be easier to then take it to donations or give to a friend who will regularly use it.
Here are a few resources I’ve come across on paring down in the kitchen and organizing recently:
- Appliances: have a read/look at this kitchen appliance pare down. The dialogue around how they chose the fate of each appliance is quite good. That said, they kept the seltzer maker… everyone has their weakness.
- Organizing: many thanks to Natalie for sending me the link to ChezLarsson. This is a DIY and home decor blog and the style is, mostly, a white palette. Great posts and photos on organizing.
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Since I started making my life more minimalist, I donated my juicer and my bread machine. I bought them on impulse, used a lot in the beginning then got lazy just to think about all the parts I would need to assemble, disassemble and wash… I still cannot do without these items: pressure cooker (we eat beans everyday), Italian coffee maker (I love coffee, also here in Brazil we offer coffee to our guests), blender, electric grill, and microwave. I don’t mind using the microwave to prepare my tea (usually mate), so I do not need a kettle.
Cheers from Brazil!
When I cleared out my kitchen drawers in January, I got rid of 7 rubber spatulas! And I still have 2. My essential appliances are: coffee maker, kettle, toaster, stand mixer, electric skillet. Ones I have on the chopping block: electric can opener (use it all the time, but I could certainly make do with a manual one), grill/griddle/panini press (doesn’t really do any of those things well), popcorn popper, coffee grinder, hand mixer, crock pot.
Rachel – No kettle? I can’t believe it! Can a home function without a kettle? After Leah was born we had two kettles at one point due to the amount of tea drinking visitors! No kettle? I still can’t take it in 🙂 Jo x
I promise I will unearth it for your visit. =)
I know, it’s shocking. But I’m an occasional tea drinker and regular coffee drinker. If that changes I’ll rethink things.
I needed this post! It has reminded me that I absolutely must clean out my utensil drawer. It is literally so fully I usually can’t close it, and I only use about 5 of the 30+ items in it. Time to donate!
I’ve been decluttering our kitchen since the beginning of the year and have gotten rid of a coffee machine, crockpot, a spice rack and half of our cutlery. I also broke our blender last week, and replaced it with a Magic Bullet for making smoothies (it’s so much smaller and that’s all I make in the blender anyway!). The Magic Bullet also grinds coffee beans really nicely, so I thrifted our coffee grinder yesterday too. 🙂
What we’ve got left is a toaster and a kettle for boiling water to make coffee in the french press, both of which live on the counter. Aside from the Magic Bullet, the only other thing I can’t live without is a rice cooker for making quinoa (for me) and rice (for everyone else). We also have a popcorn maker and a waffle maker – these are handy with the kids, but not deal breakers either way.
I still have the fondue maker we had from our wedding list, unused, keep thinking it would be fun for the kids now but never get round to using it! Only used microwave once in the last year so that might go soon. Rice cooker is my most-used gadget, eat lots of curries so it’s very useful! Tempted to get a Nespresso machine to add to all my other coffee-making equipment.
For all these years, I’ve never had an egg slicer. Interesting what people need. The kettle, however, is a must for me. Most of the water in my body has now been transformed into tea.
If they convert me to tea drinking the kettle is in the back of a cupboard… =)
I purged our kitchen. I live in a rental so I don’t have any control over the lay out or decor. It is covered wall to wall with horrible flower and striped wallpaper. 0_o That room is sooo busy I can hardly think in there…
I spent about 2 weeks a couple of months ago going through every item in the kitchen. . I moved everything from the kitchen out on a table in the garage, which is right off the kitchen..Everyday I only brought in what I needed, as I needed it. The first few days it was kind of a pain but as time went on I was needing to go out less and less often. I donated about half of what we owned.
What didn’t make the cut?? pressure cooker, crock pot, several knives, a magic bullet, dozens of cookbooks, mini cutting board, lotsa plastic…What did make the cut for me was my rice cooker! (I use it at least 3 times a week), toaster, popcorn popper, regular blender and a hand mixer. Now I have several empty drawers and cupboards, ahhh, so nice.
What a smart way to make the cut. Brilliant!
Isn’t it interesting what is important to different people?!
The only thing I have to have is a kettle – yes, British and tea-drinking!! Only a non-Brit would suggest heating water in a microwave and the Swiss (where I live) all use saucepans… with our very hard water, it would ruin my saucepans, for sure. So a kettle is a MUST!!! Having said that, a Swiss who says tea means peppermint, rosehip, linden or chamomile, probably not black tea.
I do have a microwave but could do without it when it dies (it’s 15 yrs old) and know a lot of people who can’t be bothered with one at all. Always non-English speakers, btw!
Although I own a toaster, our bread is much too nice to toast and if any ever does get old/hard enough to warrant toasting, I haul it out of the cupboard. I’ve noticed a lot of people see it as a necessity, but I don’t.
We have the same Nespresso machine, but only because my hubbie likes strong coffee, as does my BIL when he’s here or other visitors; I myself never use it, so for me it’s not a necessity.
I wonder what other gadgets people deign vital?!!
I have lived without a microwave before and found it a pain. We eat a lot of leftover here and some just don’t reheat well on the stove. I remember turning a beautiful risotto into porridge trying to reheat it on the stove.
Always fascinated by what people feel are their kitchen necessities. I would say I am missing a blender for smoothies but we have no freezer so no frozen fruit to make them.
I know! Getting rid of the kettle…?
🙂
I also use mine to pre-boil the water to add to pasta/veg/potatoes etc. It speeds up dinner prep so much.
(Heating a cup of water in the micro seems wierd to me but makes perfect sense, I guess.)
Purging our kitchen as we are mid-refurbishment of it at the moment.
I had nine wooden spoons. why? I have no idea. I don’t ever, ever recall buying even one…
Karen
(Scotland)
I don’t know what type of egg slicer it is, but our Pampered Chef egg slicer is also great for slicing strawberries!
Ha! That is interesting to know. I do like multipurpose gadgets. I actually brought over our apple corer. It’s still in a box I need to unpack but a few times a week I think, darn, I really need it.