The Kitchen Cleanse

This weekend I conquered my kitchen--with a spatula, a sponge, and a little sanity! In the process of cleansing (or examining) all my stuff, the kitchen was one place where I knew I would find some major jiggly-jiggly :) And I was right!

I didn't make a cool little pre-cleanse, during cleanse, and while cleansing list before doing the kitchen because....well, just because I didn't. Since I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, I thought that I could accurately decide what I needed to keep or let go. If anyone would like a printable list, just send me an e-mail and I'll write one up and include it in a future post :)

I'm going to split the kitchen stuff/cleanse into three separate posts (to spare all of you one eternal post!) and today I'm going to write about some questions that I found helpful while going through my kitchen. But, before we get into that, let's see if we can spot the differences between these photos...

During this process, I went cabinet by cabinet, emptied it, and then I asked myself some of these questions:

1. Do I have doubles of any food/item? If so, why do I? Do I use this product enough to justify having two or more of it? How did we end up with fifty packages of instant oatmeal....?

2.) Is any food expired or old? Why do I still have that package of ranch dressing that I'll never use? Are those pickles green or green?

3.) What dishes do we use on a daily basis? Which do we use occasionally? Do we have any dishes that never get used and just collect dust?

4.) Can I donate any of these items that I'm not using? If I can't donate them, how much money do I think I'm tossing out? (think about all those uneaten items in the fridge!) Is there a way to avoid buying items I'm not using?

5.) Are my kitchen items accessible? Will I be able to quickly find an item or will I give up and just go buy another one?

Once I finished really looking through each cabinet, drawer, and refrigerator shelf, I gave it all a good cleaning and took mental inventory of all the items that I threw out or put in the donate pile. It's important to really look at the items that you don't use and ask yourself why that is. Evaluating what you have compared to what you actually use is a practice that helps develop smart buying habits! I want to have a kitchen that is comfortable to cook/bake in and contains items I actually use. I don't want to just reorganize all the same stuff I'm not using (even if I do put it in cute containers with chalk labels!)

In the end, I feel like my kitchen feels fresh, organized, and simplified!

Do any of you have any tips for a kitchen cleanse?

I'll be back with a post about how to keep it simple in the kitchen!