Is your kitchen full of clutter jamming the linear rails of your drawers? Despite the fact that it is generally the cleanest room in your house, it is typically more cluttered due to the volume of necessities needed in that space. My kitchen is rather small, so being able to keep the chaos in the cabinets to a minimum proved rather difficult at first. I was able to eliminate the clutter though and have kept it at bay ever since. You are really going to have to roll up your sleeves though, this is tough work.
Pick the cabinet that looks like it is ready to burst at the seams, and begin with it. Take everything, and I do mean everything out. Once you have it all in front of you, go through and see what you are using and what you are not. Any non-perishable food items that are not outdated but are not eaten can be donated to your local food pantry. Anything that has expired needs to be tossed out. The same can be said of items without a visible expiration date or label.
Examine pots, pans, and eating utensils. Chances are, you have things that are not in proper working condition and shouldn’t be kept either. Just throw it away. The pots and pans that you do not regularly use, the roasting pan per se, should not be stored with the other items. The things that you just don’t use period should either be donated or disposed of. If you are anything like me, you will find several items that don’t even belong in a kitchen. Set these in a box or container to be sorted later
Don’t be too quick to put the items back in the cabinet. The goal is to not only rid yourself of clutter but to prevent it from happening again. There is an easy system for this. Least used items don’t need to go somewhere for really fast access, most frequently used goods should be right there for easy consumption. Put items that expire first at the beginning of the row so that they are used first. Organize pots, pans, and eating utensils in the same manner.
Move on to the rest of your cabinets and do the same thing. After you’ve finished, take a good look around the room to see if there are any other items in the kitchen that does not belong. A lot of people tend to collect mail and similar things on the top of the refrigerator. Make sure that there is nothing laying on the countertops that aren’t used on a frequent basis. Take the “does not belong” box out and put the items where they belong, and you are finished. Maintenance is easy, simply throw out the item when it’s not working properly or expired. Take a quick two-minute sweep, if that long, on a daily basis to make sure that nothing is there that shouldn’t be and that things are put away.
