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
Lindy B. says
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.
Carol says
It makes more sense in your situation to leave those heavy items on the counter. Your kitchen should serve you, not some generic person. In my situation, my kitchen is very, very small, so the toaster is left out. There may be a few items to remove from cabinets, but not much. And my cabinets are also very small. No room for the toaster.
Appellointeriors says
simple and pretty decoration, with taste.
Diana B says
kitchen counter is important part in the kitchen. Regularly clean up the counter. Unclear counter kill the beauty of the kitchen.
Mylène says
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 :-)
Reta says
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. ?♀️
Ginette Bisaillon says
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.
Cathryn P. says
Professional kitchens run 8-12 hours straight. They need their tools near them. Joshua is referring to a home cook, not a busy restaurant.
Margie says
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!
Jean says
I keep my toaster on a tray and it goes in a cupboard under the
counter. Easy to get to when we need it.
Joanne @ Clutter to Cash Formula says
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!
Judy says
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.
Kay says
Instead of ditching, how about donating. There are many nonprofits that would love to have gently used items!