A handy guide to decluttering your kitchen.
At Blackbrook Kitchens we firmly believe that the kitchen is the heart of the home.
As well as being a place for cooking, it’s for dining, relaxing with a glass of wine, working, getting through a myriad of household jobs, entertaining, playing… and much more. The fact that the kitchen is such hard working and multi tasking space means that it’s no wonder our kitchens are often well worn and crammed full of clutter. And once the clutter starts to gather it can easily take over and make your kitchen a much more stressful place to be. When everywhere you look there are little piles of things waiting to find a home and every time you open a cupboard a tidal wave of Tupperware falls out - you have to admit that your kitchen is not the spacious, easily navigable space that it should be.
Many kitchens come with plenty of storage space and a place for everything to start with.
However, as time goes on and life and your day-to-day needs change, if you don’t keep things tidy and clutter free - your kitchen can become a much less lovely space to be in. At Blackbrook Kitchens, we’re always full of great ideas for creating kitchen designs that will suit you perfectly if you’ve had enough of your current kitchen. But if you’re not ready for a full on kitchen re-design right now, how about having a good clear out and declutter? Tidying is totally on trend right now - and as some of us still have a bit more spare time than usual, it’s not a bad moment to have a go. We’ve come up with some good tips for making your kitchen declutter as stress free and swift as possible - and for ensuring that you end up with a haven of well ordered calm.
Our first tip would be to set a time limit for each kitchen de-cluttering session.
Whether you have a spare 10 minutes to do 3 cupboards, or a couple of hours to do the entire kitchen, putting a little bit of pressure on yourself is not such a bad thing. Not only does it ensure you don’t end up tidying well into the night, it also makes the decision making a little bit easier. You’re less inclined toget distracted by memories about all your heirlooms too. Think of it purely as an opportunity to get rid of the excess and implement some order. Just take each space at a time and decide which things to keep, which to give away or sell… and which to throw away. Equip yourself with a rubbish bag or bin, and a couple of sturdy boxes to start off with so you pack as you go (and aren’t tempted to reclaim anything later.) You’ll probably find a pile develops quite quickly of things you want to keep but which are in the wrong place… just gather this and leave it because you can deal with it later.
So simply work your way around the kitchen, completely decluttering bit by bit.
You could even use a stopwatch timer so you can challenge yourself to beat it. For every item you come across, try and make a swift and sensible decision about whether it stays or goes. There are some specific questions that should help you decide:
Do I actually use it? If the answer is yes, then the second question is ‘when did I last use it? It’s easy to find yourself convinced that items are super useful, when in reality you haven’t picked them up for a couple of years or more. As a rule of thumb if they’re used less regularly than annually - they’re really not essential!
Do I like it? Lurking gifts that you’ve never been sure about, items you’ve inherited or bought on a whim… if you don’t like them or like using them then they’re more than likely surplus to requirements.
Do I have more of these than I need? Evaluate your requirements and cull accordingly. If you have three cheese graters, can one go to the charity shop? If the only time you use all those cake tins is Christmas every other year then maybe cutting back and borrowing a couple just for festive prep is a good plan.
Would I buy this today? This is a good one - particularly for more decorative items. If you don’t like the way it looks enough to show it off on a shelf then maybe its’ days are numbered.
There are some key kitchen items which lots of us are prone to hoarding too.
We’ll have backups - and backups for the backups… and end up hardly using any of them!
Cookery Books - As much as we love the idea of browsing leisurely through them over a Sunday morning brunch, often our Cookery Books go untouched. Donate any that you’ve literally barely used. If there’s a whole book with only one favourite recipe, take a photo of it (or check if it’s available on the internet) and ditch the bulky book. If you can’t bear to get rid of them, pack 3/4 away and challenge yourself to swap the remainder over in a couple of months time which might encourage you to try some new recipes and expand your repertoire.
Tea towels, cleaning cloths and oven mitts - If they’re such a state that you’d not be happy to hang them up in the kitchen, they probably should be in the bin. If they’re full of holes, very stained, moth eaten or worse - let them go. Whenever you get a new one, dispatch an old one to the bin.
Cleaning products - The cupboard under most people’s sinks is full to bursting. Not only will there be the essentials like loo cleaner, polish, antibac spray and washing up liquid, loads of space will be taken up by long out-of-date, unused, or crusted over cleaners and polishes. Tiny left-over amounts of chemicals in large bottles are worth disposing of (carefully). Random products that you bought for single specific jobs and won’t ever use again can be dispatched. Before you know it you’ll have lot of space and will be able to see exactly what you have for what job.
Food and spices - Ancient bags of flour, spices that don’t smell any more, packets that are years past their sell by and totally unappetising… now’s the time to throw them out.
Tupperware - You know the problem - a whole cupboard full of lids without bottoms and bottoms without lids. Have a good sortand anything that doesn’t pair up should be shipped out.
Gadgets and appliances - If you just don’t use it then try to sell it or donate it. Most of the tasks these niche gadgets do are usually completely achievable with regular kitchen equipment, so even if you suddenly feel the need to cut carrots into thin strips or whizz up a green smoothie, you’ll still be able to… even without the super high tech slicer or bullet blender.
Random junk - Very few kitchens are without a random junk draw. Old keys, plastic toys, pens and pencils, blobs of blue tack… as long as it’s full of useful bits and bobs that you often need to grab, and you don’t find yourself rummaging for hours, that’s fine. It’s definitely worth a quick assessment though… we bet 50% of it should be somewhere else and at least 25% should be in the bin.
When you visit friends and are wowed by their fabulous clutter free kitchen, it’s often because they’ve managed to keep the worktops pretty clear.
Training yourself (and your family) not to just dump piles of paperwork, stacks of crockery or oddments all around the kitchen worktops is the first step to creating a sense of tidiness (even if inside the cupboards and drawers it’s another story!)
It helps to consider whether the things you use often are in the handiest places. Moving the less used things to the back of the cupboards means everything’s more likely to stay tidy- and a lot easier to find.
When you put your groceries away, try to position things so you can see what they are. That way you’re less likely to lose things or find you’ve overbought. Some well considered storage jars and containers can make like a lot easier when it comes to kitchen storage too.
Some simple adjustments to your kitchen, like adding open shelving, putting new additional shelves into the cupboards or adding hooks, a pan rack or storage baskets can expand your storage space enormously. If you’d like to discuss some of these options, why not give us a call at Blackbrook Kitchens?
It may be that your current kitchen is just not keeping up with your hectic lifestyle. A growing family, increased enthusiasm for cooking, reduction in spare time or just a desire to make the hub of the house a little more haven-like are all good reasons to consider a bit of careful kitchen re-adjustment. It may be that just adding some new cupboards or moving things around a bit is enough. Alternatively if you want to extend, add bifold doors to bring the outside in or reconfigure the walls and create a whole new kitchen diner space, at Blackbrook we can discuss your requirements, consider all your needs and design a bespoke solution to suit you down to the ground.