Picture your dream kitchen. I bet it’s not filled with clutter.
There is something refreshing and life giving about a clean, uncluttered kitchen. It sets the tone and culture for the home. It communicates calm and order. It promotes opportunity and possibility. It saves time and ensures cleanliness. The kitchen truly is the heart of your home.
But it is definitely one of the more difficult places in the home to keep uncluttered. There are several reasons for this:
- The kitchen is usually located in a high-traffic area of the home.
- The purpose of the room almost requires messes to be made during its use.
- The kitchen is often used as a collection area for odds and ends (such as mail).
When you think about your own kitchen, what kinds of clutter come to mind? Are you seduced by shiny gadgets or specialized tools that aren’t really necessary? Do you have several duplicates from when you got married and merged your kitchen supplies with your spouse’s? Have you accumulated an extensive cookbook collection even though you use only one or two favorite cookbooks regularly?
If your kitchen is anything like most people’s, you can get rid of a lot there.
Set Your Kitchen Goals
Start by thinking about what you want your kitchen to accomplish. Is it to enable you to cook tasty, healthy meals for your family without too much fuss? Is it to be easy to keep clean so it offers you a sense of peace and doesn’t waste your time? Is it to serve as a comfortable space for family or friends to keep you company as you cook?
Being clear about your kitchen goals is essential. Why? Because your goals become your guidelines. You use them every time you ask Do I really need this?
For example, if your goal is to cook meals without a lot of fuss, do you really need the Bluetooth-enabled food dehydrator, pasta maker with four attachments, and airbrush cake decorating kit? What about the salad scissors, banana slicer, or corn silk remover?
At this point, if you fancy yourself a chef, have spurts where cooking provides you with comfort, or just love good food, you may be nervous that minimizing your kitchen is going to ruin your workshop for culinary creation. Take heart!
Minimizing in the kitchen doesn’t take away from you—just the opposite. It is life-giving and home-enhancing.
Removing the possessions you don’t need will uncover what’s been obscured about the joy of cooking by removing the excess clutter and distractions from your kitchen work space.
But don’t take my word for it. Take it from professional chef Mark Bittman who decked out an entire kitchen for about $300, including every cooking utensil someone would need to cook like a pro. He summarized his kitchen utensil philosophy this way: “It needs only to be functional, not prestigious, lavish or expensive.”
Clear the Kitchen Clutter
Pick a time—maybe start first thing in the morning—when you have at least a couple of hours for the project. That’s what I did—on a Saturday morning when I knew I had time to finish the project.
Make a cup of coffee or turn on some music to put yourself at ease. Clear space on the counters to set out items.
Follow this six-step process to declutter your kitchen:
1. Relocate Anything That Does Not Belong in the Kitchen
Kitchens are notorious collection areas for odds and ends—mail, kids’ homework, purses, keys, and all that stuff in the infamous junk drawer. Identify a new “home” for each out-of-place item and move it there.
2. Notice Physical Boundaries
There are physical boundaries all over your kitchen—drawers and cabinets that provide defined, limited spaces for storage. Rather than shoving as much as you can inside these spaces, use their limitations as helpful guidelines on how much stuff to keep.
3. Remove Duplicates and Little-Used Items
Evaluate all the items in your kitchen by asking yourself the right question. The right question is not, Might I conceivably use it at some time? The right question is, Do I need it? If you’ve rarely or never used a tool, bowl, or storage container, then it’s probably not really necessary to keep. Also, kitchens are notorious for duplicates (spatulas, coffee mugs, spoons, pots & pans, Tupperware). Remove unneeded duplicates, keep your favorites.
Here’s a pro tip: Keep one set of lidded plastic food containers that nest together and discard the others.
4. Give Every Item a Proper Home
Designate drawers for silverware and utensils; cupboards for plates, containers, pots and pans, and small appliances; and closets or shelves for food and larger, less-used appliances.
5. Clear the Counters
If your counters are routinely cluttered, there’s a good chance you’re storing too many daily-use items there (toaster, coffee maker, teapot, can opener, spice rack, knife block, canister of wooden spoons, cutting board, and the like). You’ve probably reasoned that leaving such things on the counters makes them easier to grab when you need them.
This is where the convenience fallacy comes into play.
The reality is that these items spend far more time as clutter than they do as needed instruments of food preparation. For example, if you make toast for breakfast, it will take you roughly three minutes to toast your bread. After that, the toaster will sit unused for the next twenty-three hours and fifty-seven minutes.
Rather than allowing these appliances to take up counter space, find a home for them in an easily accessed part of the kitchen, such as inside a cabinet or on a shelf.
And don’t forget the kitchen sink. Put away any cleaning supplies (soap, scrubber, and so on) that currently clutter up the sink area.
6. Purge the Pantry
The whole point of a kitchen is consuming food, so it makes sense that you’ve got a lot of consumables in cabinets or a pantry. But chances are that you’ve also got lots of things in there you can remove.
- Pull out everything and group items by kind.
- Relocate whatever doesn’t belong in the pantry.
- Clean the pantry.
- Put old and expired food items in the trash or compost.
- Put foods back into the pantry in logical groupings. Note where you need to reduce certain foods by “eating through” your supplies or by donating unopened packages to a local food pantry.
- Organize items with bins or transparent containers so you can see at a glance what you’ve got.
- Consider how to handle grocery shopping differently so you don’t have so much food sitting around in your pantry.
When you spend less time taking care of a cluttered kitchen, you have more time to make nutritious, delicious meals for your family and linger in conversation at the dinner table. When you make room for loved ones in your kitchen, you prioritize relationships by expanding everyone’s opportunities for giving and receiving love. That’s what makes the kitchen the heart of the home. It’s where body and soul are fed simultaneously.
Additional Resources:
The Declutter Your Home Checklist
How to Declutter Your Home: 10 Powerfully Creative Decluttering Tips
What is Minimalist Living? 8 Essential Aspects of Minimalism
About Joshua Becker
There’s actually an object that slices bananas?
I’d like to know what to do with my toaster when I am done with it…my counter just been cleaned and I use it everyday. Where do you usually put your toasters after use? Thank you for your reply.
Yes, I fully understand that everyday utensils can appear bulky on counters. I think I accomplished my mission today by putting my vitamins and my meds in the cupboards instead of being on the counters, just like my spices, oils, knives in the drawers, and only the mini juicer stays. To heat the water I prefer my teapot but I also use the microwave. I plan to get rid of a few cups and then use this space for daily use. I intend to keep the cookbooks although I use recipes more and more online. I am so happy that we are using the lower shelves for our books and soon also for the many beautiful cups / coffee cups very practical … It is difficult for me to make a choice! It will also seem to go against the minimalism movement, but I plan to spend on lighter things to lift and carry because the machines I use are so old-fashioned that they are always heavy to hold, like porcelain … in short, still a lot to “purge”.
I just discovered your FB page and this website. Am looking forward to trying some of the ideas. What would you suggest for someone like me who is disabled and unable to lift heavy small appliances every time I need to use them. For example, I use my instantpot four to five times per week and it lives on the counter. I’d have to store it in another area of the house if I want it out of sight. But then I wouldn’t be able to use it often as i can’t carry it back and forth almost every day. Same with the vitamix that gets used every day. I would LOVE to have a counter that is clear and clutter free, but then I wouldn’t be able to access a lot of the things I use every day.
simple and pretty decoration, with taste.
kitchen counter is important part in the kitchen. Regularly clean up the counter. Unclear counter kill the beauty of the kitchen.
Hello,
The french frog is there (again!).
Thank you for this article, I understand the importance to come back to the basics.
We really need to be more conscious that the advertising are influencing our perception of our needs.
I will follow your advice.
Thank you for your work.
Bonjour de France :-)
I am very attched to my clutter!! Sisters large milk jug, mums glass fruit bowl stand, edna’s china teapot with a chipped lid, family irish coffe mugs, vintage arnotts biscuit tin from great grandma’s general store, a set if CWA calendar recipe books, drawer full of souvenier tea towels and hand crochet tablemats and doyleys, auntie’s full set of kitchen utensils etc !!!! I did recycle an old recipe book as decoupage project on my kitchen table. My friends love my clutter and i have the special memories. 🧚♀️
Visit professional kitchens and you will see why kitchen tools need to be accessible at all times, not hidden away in some drawer. In my own kitchen, only the ice cream maker is put away between used.
Professional kitchens run 8-12 hours straight. They need their tools near them. Joshua is referring to a home cook, not a busy restaurant.
Oh I so wished I could post pictures on here!! I lost my husband to cancer last summer and since the first of this year I have finally gotten my head together and into spring cleaning. We were just beginning to de clutter when he got sick. We actually cleaned out our attic completely before we put our Christmas tree up in 2017. 5 days later we found out he had about 6 months…I literally just got through taking pics of my kitchen, dining area and laundry room before I sat down to take a break and read this! All of my counters are cleared except for the Keurig, my oven top is home to a plant! (No need to cook for one!)…I have gotten rid of anything I don’t use, the two top shelves of ALL my cabinets are EMPTY, which is really great for short people! It’s liberating, It really is…and it’s keeping me busy!
I keep my toaster on a tray and it goes in a cupboard under the
counter. Easy to get to when we need it.
I LOVE #2: Notice Physical Boundaries. This is a big one because I’ve seen people with so much stuff that they need ‘overflow’ areas like shelves in the basement or the hall closet for kitchen items that don’t fit in the kitchen!
Being mindful of your defined, limited spaces is one of the best ways to decide what stays and what goes!
Time to let the clutter go! I am more motivated than ever! :)
I hate all the extra “junk” ! It is so freeing to pitch it— donate it.
Goodbye useless crap! Hello Happiness!
And NO… our kids don’t want it either when we leave this earth.
Instead of ditching, how about donating. There are many nonprofits that would love to have gently used items!
I call my kitchen clutter “organized clutter”. 😉 It doesn’t look bad until I’ve taken a pic of someone or something in the kitchen and then I truly see the clutter for what it is when it is the background of the picture! I think our eyes just get used to it. I love your idea of “convenience fallacy”. Now I need to first declutter drawers and cabinets so I can make room for all the things on my counters!
Omg. This is so helpful.
I have a mess!!!😩
Have you been looking in my pantry? That one hit home because my canned goods are overflowing. I am going to purge that pantry tomorrow.
The rest of the house is really pared down but for some reason I just never tackled the pantry. I acquire a lot of canned goods during hurricanes since I live on the Coast & although canned spaghetti might be great after a hurricane (you can heat it on your outside charcoal grill when there’s no power) we don’t normally eat it.
I like having emergency canned goods on hand as well! That is super smart and responsible! At least two week’s of food is in my cabinet. It is all stuff I use and when a can gets opened, that food item gets added to the grocery list right away to be stored behind the other cans of said food. The pantry cabinet stays neat and up to date. Best wishes on your pantry purge – you will feel much better and prepared once you finish!
Eve: that’s why I have too much canned food too, went thru hurricane Michael in Oct. tore up much in this city. When something was on sale (buy one get one) I would load up during hurricane season. Also donated (group homes) 6 boxes of pasta already.
Same here in Hawaii, regarding Hurricane season. I buy new supplies each April, then donate the leftovers in November to food bank before everything is outdated.
We cook a lot, so keeping the kitchen clean is a priority.
We just got into the habit of making sure we do the dishes each night, and it makes a giant difference.
Our kitchen is very small, so putting away appliances when not in use has also been helpful.
I had several cookbooks that I kept because they had ONE or TWO recipes I made. I realized I could scan and print those recipes and donate about half a dozen cookbooks.
I love #5! We did all of the other steps a few years ago, and while that felt great and helped with the clutter if our kitchen, something was still missing. Then, about a year ago my wife cleared the countertops of everything except our toaster oven. The difference was remarkable.
Another suggestion that worked great for us was to use ALL space in cabinets. Use dividers to place items vertically and add an extra shelf in taller cabinets. Downsize first, then properly organize.
When we first decluttered our kitchen, we had six casserole dishes! We rarely make casseroles. We now have one small one and one large one we use regularly. Our biggest change was ditching the coffee maker all together for a French press. I love how easily it stores in a cabinet, no longer do we waste half a pot of coffee and it tastes better!
After having a toaster and then a toaster/toaster oven combo (yes, they were separate in one appliance!) over the years, I donated both and now toast any bread item I have in the oven at “broil”. One must pay close attention and flip when the first side is done, but the counter real estate is just too valuable to occupy with either appliance that gets used at most a few times a month! Using the oven for this purpose works fine!
I toast bread in the oven too! So much better than having a lent collecting toaster on the counter. Plus, when I have company over, I can toast many slices of bread at one time so that we can all have toast together! Why have that extra gadget when the multi-purpose oven is right there?
Heating a whole oven just for toasting bread will use a lot of electricity, much more than a toaster. So that’s a good reason to use a toaster. But you don’t need to keep it out on the counter of course. I keep it in a cupboard.
What happens when the toaster dies though? Many parts are not recycleable. If we are considering sustainabilty the oven might be the way to go once your toaster goes to toaster heaven. I don’t toast a lot, but in my new home the kitchen outlets are very high and I cannot plug in my toaster as the cord is to short. I was frustrated at first, but it has not been a devastating loss.
And this is where individual use comes into play. We toast almost every day for 1–4 people. Sometimes we toast for lunch or for a snack in addition to breakfast. I have a fair amount of under cabinet counter space but not a lot of cabinet space that would accommodate our toaster oven. Coffee pot … same thing. Used at least twice, sometimes 3 times a day. By the time it was cool and dry and put away, we’d be pulling it out again. My cast iron skillets live on my stove (unless I need the space) because they get so much use. And we eat a lot of leftovers (and make big batches of soups, sauces, chili, etc.) so one set of nesting storage containers wouldn’t cut it. I know that I could get rid of clutter in the kitchen and probably store things better, but these particular tips aren’t working for me.
Great article! I’ve gotten rid of so much kitchen equipment over the years and while reading this article I thought of more I could live without. If only I hadn’t wasted the money on these items to begin with!
Many health concious people line vitamins/food supplements on back of counters to remind them to take them daily. Doesn’t take up hardly any room as they are against the back wall. The blender is used daily for smoothies and soups. If anyone comes over for a short visit, they will rarely see my kitchen anyway. We do not have over night guests after parents passed on some years back. Recently culled and got rid of utensils no longer used. Extra mugs, dishes, plastic containers went also. Too much food in pantry, must use up.
I agree I think it is ridiculous to put all appliances away. I live in an apartment & I do not have the cabinet space for them, Additionally a toaster is constantly dropping bread crumbs, which I wouldn’t want to have in a cabinet—- think bugs! The coffee maker is out because it is used throughout the day and it is too heavy & bulky to lift into a cabinet anyway throughout the day. I also have a smoothie maker which i use 3 times a day. A few appliances that I use on a daily basis is not clutter in my opinion.
I Love my coffee maker and rarely use already made one. Just a quick question about how you can have it easy in the morning ? Breakfast is really a big deal at our house. Cherrios on the top of the fridge are great to save in space. Bread crumbs are horribly handled but I can live with this afterwards.
I love to cook and entertain, so the kitchen is always the hardest room for me to keep clean! I did a massive declutter of ALL our possessions back in 2013 (which helped a lot), but I think an important part, for me, of keeping those high-traffic areas clean is to establish a system for things like incoming paperwork and mail and such.
Also, for entertaining, rather than keep a huge closet full of linens and decor and such, I’ve limited my collection of vases and decor to what can fit into one cupboard, and I have just 3 table linens–two white and a red. White is so classic and fresh that it works for basically every occasion, so I just switch out the rest of the decor to make it match.
That article about all the kitchen appliances for $300 sounds fascinating! On my way to check it out now!