Every week, baking expert Alice Medrich will be going rogue on Food52 -- with shortcuts, hacks, and game-changing recipes.
Today: Enough with the clutter! Take a love stance towards overflowing drawers and shelves and get excited to keep your kitchen spic and span.
You will be shocked to discover how much more energy and motivation for cooking and baking you may have after even a modest bout of de-cluttering. Whole books are written on the subject. You can make it a major project or a series of small ones. I vote for the latter.
The goal is to clear counters and un-stuff drawers, cabinets, and crocks so that you can work with pleasure and serenity. The process is painless and incrementally rewarding if you do it in small bites, an hour at a time, over several weeks.
First consider the hierarchy of your space:
- Prime real estate: kitchen counters, drawers, crocks, and easy-to-reach cabinets
- Suburbs: convenient pantries or closets, in or close to the kitchen
- Outlands: basements, garages, and upper kitchen and pantry shelves that require a stepladder to access
To see immediate results, start with prime real estate and attack the low-hanging fruit: Pick one drawer or cupboard or one type of item and just dig in. (I started with an enormous collection of jars, containers, and lids and moved on to my collection of salts.) One thing will lead to another.
Big hint: Save any hard or traumatic decisions for later -- they will get progressively easier the more you clean.
Toss out the obvious, then shift items from prime real estate to the suburbs (or beyond) based on frequency of use and ease of moving things back to the counter when needed. For example, if you move a heavy appliance to the suburbs or outlands, put it on an accessible shelf at waist level for easy lifting. Otherwise you will never want to use it again -- and when that happens, you might later consider getting rid of it altogether. As you progress, you’ll also find items in the suburbs that belong in outlands, etc. You’ll end up rearranging those areas and the decision to let go of things will become less traumatic.
Start by tossing these things out:
- Ancient food in bottles and cans and boxes. I’m not going to gives rule here -- you can read dates or just ask yourself if you would really eat or serve it.
- Ground spices that smell faint or musty
- Old oils (these are probably rancid)
- Old specialty flours, nuts, and seeds (these are also probably rancid)
- Opened cookies, crackers, cereal, or pretzels that are stale
- Dried fruits that are rock-hard from age
- Seasonings from your trip to New Orleans ten years ago
- Ugly souvenirs
- At least half of that enormous supply of jars, containers, and lids for food storage
- Pot holders that are too thin, impossibly dirty, or torn
Now consider moving these things from prime real estate:
- Infrequently used appliances that live on the counter
- Never- or rarely-used or rusty utensils stuffed into drawers or crocks
- Extra cutlery and dishes used for hosting large parties
- Special or seasonal baking tools, pans, cookie cutters, extra cookie sheets, and cake decorating supplies
- Rarely used cookbooks
- Ugly or torn dishtowels that should be in the ragbag
- Giant stock, crab, or lobster pots
- Turkey roaster and rack
- Miscellaneous, ugly, or cracked mugs, glassware, and dishes
- Office supplies (isn’t there a better place?)
- Barbecue utensils
- Craft supplies (after your kids are off to or even graduated from college)
Bigger Hint: To jump-start the de-cluttering process -- or to keep the momentum going -- it may be necessary to invite a friend in to play “bad cop” once in a while. It works. Be sure to return the favor.
What are your best tips for keeping clutter under control? We want to hear them!
Pick up a copy of Alice's new book Flavor Flours, which includes nearly 125 recipes -- from Double Oatmeal Cookies to Buckwheat Gingerbread -- made with wheat flour alternatives like rice flour, oat flour, corn flour, sorghum flour, and teff (not only because they're gluten-free, but for an extra dimension of flavor, too).
Photos by James Ransom
It's here: Our game-changing guide to everyone's favorite room in the house. Your Do-Anything Kitchen gathers the smartest ideas and savviest tricks—from our community, test kitchen, and cooks we love—to help transform your space into its best self.
Grab your copy
Written by: Alice Medrich
Popular on Food52
11 Comments
If you haven't used something for two years (or more) either sell it on ebay, donate it to a charity shop or chuck it out with the rubbish. There are one or two exceptions to this. Hang on to a fish kettle (but store other things inside it), keep a jam pan (if you haven't room for it lend it to someone who will use it,on the proviso you can get it back if you decided to have a marmalade-making spree). If you have gagets which duplicate functions, choose the one you like/use most and get rid of the others. If in doubt - chuck it out! Store things logically and keep a list of what you have and where it is.
As to the edible stuff, fresher the better. Dried herbs and spices become flavourless dust after a relatively short time. Buy the ones you use regularly in small quantities and replace them as and when. No-one needs a shelf full of stuff you might never use . You can tell I was once a librarian, can't you?!
--I store my heavy stainless bench scraper under my ancient irreplaceable toaster oven.There is a space where it just fits, and the large rolled edge at the top of the handle- is just big enough that it keeps the scraper from disappearing under the appliance.
-- my recipes are printed out and stored in plastic sleeves and stored in folders. I am lazy about putting away used recipes, so i store them flat in an attractive tray/box under my island and then sporadically do a big re-filing.
--to discern between dish washing sponges and clean-up sponges, i snip off a corner of my clean-up sponges.
-- I keep a pretty blue glass jar filled with a weak bleach solution-on the window sill behind one of my sinks . This is where smelly sponges occasionally vacation.
--we have a large garden and we generate a good amunt of compost, so to collect it, we use a blue grey Rubbermaid plastic rectangular bin with lid- on the back of the griddle section of our commercial range.
--All our constantly used cooking utensils are stored on the shelf above our range- upright, in rectangular decorative terra cotta plant pots that we have outfitted with a jury-rigged grid of dividers (like a wine box) to keep the utensils from falling over.
-- all our knives live on magnet bars affixed above a work counter.
I hope some of these might be helpful to other 52ers!
See what other Food52 readers are saying.