Day 12: Kitchen Cupboards

We are more than a third through the month of October! It's day twelve of my 31 Days of Decluttering and Organizing series. I suppose if you are new to reading you are starting to realize that I, Your Organized Friend, am a bit of a minimalist. Yes, yes, I am. So take all my photos with a grain of salt. You don't have to get your cupboards this sparse...unless you want to. I also have a lot of cupboard space. In fact some shelves are empty. This is a first for me!

We wash our dishes regularly. If I do use a couple saucepans for a meal, I can have them cleaned up and ready for the next meal. I mean I only have four burners, right?! So I don't collect an abundance of pots and pans. And you can see from the pictures I store similar types of baking and cooking pans together. If I showed pictures of other cupboards you would see the same thing. Dishes and bowls together by size of course! And mugs and glassware are in the same cupboard.

If you not sure where to start, pick one cupboard. Is there anything in that one you picked that you never use or haven't used in quite some time. Those items can go. They are the easy ones to let go of. Any thought if you might have too many of the particular items in there? Not sure. Consider moving some items out for awhile (probably to another location outside of your kitchen). If you can go several weeks without missing them, you may not need them. And you should probably donate them soon after the trial period. It is okay to keep if they will be used when you entertain, of course. And if you needed them during this little experiment, then by all means keep the items!

Short on time to do your entire kitchen? Maybe you can find five minutes (or less) each evening after dinner to look at one cupboard or drawer. Continue every day if you can until you complete at least a basic review of the contents of your cupboards. Better is a fine goal. No worries about perfection.

I moved to a new home a few months ago and I made sure do this before we moved so that I was only moving and unpacking the items we really used and wanted to keep. It made a big difference putting things away. The only thing I didn't keep was a broken plate!

Did you declutter a kitchen cupboard? What kinds of excess have you been storing?