Things Get Cooking In the Kitchen

I thought about calling this Kitchen Kapers or Kleaning The Kitchen but then I have never been a fan of intentional misspelled words for marketing purposes, so I went for something a little more cheesy.

At any rate, the knowledge that we were going to have to eventually tackle the kitchen was gnawing away at the back of our minds. Each week since we started decluttering, we would go to bed and one of us would mutter, “You know. We still have to tackle kitchen… and the garage … and the craft room.” And then we would both sigh and stare off into the distance. I mean, it was just eating at us.

Alright, enough of that (although it was all true).

We finally went for the kitchen. It represented a unique challenge.

My wife was leaving town so it all had to be done in one day, not to mention that we would need to use the kitchen again for meals. And on that one day, lunch and dinner had to be handheld food eaten elsewhere or purchased and eaten elsewhere.

This meant this was our first time “on the clock” so to speak. Additionally, we did not want to just throw things back in drawers randomly or back where they had been.

We wanted to re-think the whole kitchen and how things flowed and how it was used.

The kitchen had been organized as it was since we first moved in 4 years ago. Things were put where they seemed to go best or just fit, as is often the case.

Now that we had some time under our belts, we could address issues in kitchen flow at the same time as decluttering.

It was an ambitious plan. It took an ambitious effort. It took the ENTIRE day, but it got done.

As usual, we pulled everything out of the cupboards. And as usual it was amazing how much stuff there really was. It covered the table, the chairs and the floor and overflowed into adjacent rooms.

We had the now-normal experience of saying, “I forgot we had that!” Or “Why do we even have this?” Or, “So that’s where this was.”

It still amazes me how much stuff we have that we don’t even know about.

There is a lot of stuff just taking up space, occupying a portion of our souls, that we don’t even consciously remember. And then it is amazing that once you see it again (even if it hasn’t been seen or remembered for years) how hard it is to let it go, because you remember it now.

Our kids fled the house. It has become stressful for them when we go through this process because the house is in such disarray. I am going to write on it in a future post, but I have begun to notice a definite correlation to mood and behavior with the state of the house.

We began the decluttering process in the usual fashion. We got our two boxes, one for donations and one for garbage and went through and got rid of the easiest items. There are always a number of these. This decreases the amount of stuff you need to sift through and emotionally deal with.

Then it was time to get to the hard stuff.

The gravy boat we keep for special occasions but never remember to use . . . does it go?

The decorative plates meant for serving holiday meals that we remember to use but never do because food gets stuck in the decorative detail and is so hard to clean out . . . do they go?

The mango corer. Super great tool. Super convenient. But we last bought and ate a mango several years ago. Does it go?

And so on.

Once those decisions were made, it was time to try and determine kitchen flow.

For our kitchen, the drawers were clearly made to have the silverware in one area, the pans in another, etc. But for the way we prepare food and use the kitchen, those drawers made no sense for us. Yet that is how we had set up the first time because that is the way it was built.

This time we intentionally put things away based on years of experience using this kitchen. We solved a lot of flow problems at dinner time by putting things into sections based on how food is prepared and then cooked and then staged.

Now that we had those things determined, it was time to begin putting things away and see how much of what was left would fit in our “container”. Everything else would have to go.

With the items we had already gotten rid of at the beginning, we were able to get most of the stuff put back. We ended up with a few items we had to make some hard decisions on, but with the container size and the kitchen flow already defined, it wasn’t too gut-wrenching.

It took us the WHOLE day. And I mean the whole day. We started about 8am and finished well after dinner time. We were exhausted, but happy. Another several boxes of stuff went to the donation center and the kitchen (and therefore, the house) was much cleaner and open.

We then had to have a family meeting, just to orient the kids to how the kitchen was organized so that they could find their way around and get food!

It has been a month now since we went through this process in the kitchen and so I have some time to report on how things have gone.

We have a lot more counter space now. The kitchen feels more open and usable. There is more room to wash and dry dishes. We aren’t stepping over each other when we are trying to cook meals. Things are where they can be more easily reached away from where people are working.

It’s not perfect. I doubt there is a system that is (unless it was built that way like an industrial kitchen with a lot of size and specialized equipment). But it is a lot better than it was. And we know where everything is and what we have.

Every time we declutter an area and I take those bags to the garbage and to the donation center, I feel like weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. I feel like I can breathe easier. I literally feel like there is just less STUFF weighing me down.

As we have gone along, we have started to ask ourselves, “How much space do we REALLY need?”

It’s a funny question and a topic for another day, but it is a thought worth asking.

How much space do we really need? How big a house is “big enough” and how much house is just too much?

That answer will vary from person to person, of course. But I’ll bet there is a size that would work comfortably and reasonably for 80% of the people out there.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying having a big house is bad (I love big houses). I’m not approaching this from a standpoint of saying there should be a limit on what people can own or do. I’m simply asking this from the perspective of what is the cost, both financially and emotionally, of having more space than we need?

It costs us more money to purchase. It takes more time and money to maintain. And we tend to fill that space with stuff. It’s funny that this journey has taken me to this place mentally. It is not where I meant to go. But after taking literally truckloads of stuff to the donation center so far (with a few big areas still to go), I have to ask myself this question. But as I said, that is really a discussion for another day.

For now, I will continue enjoying our kitchen and try not to think about the big decluttering projects still to come.