15 Things Your Kitchen Doesn't Need

you know one of my main reasons behind simplifying our kitchen early on was that i was just so tired of it always being a mess a huge mess it didn't matter what day of the week what time of day usually there was dishes that need to be done there was stuff piled on the counter and it was just constantly a mess and so my hope was simplifying it was that it would be easier to keep clean which would then mean that i would cook more and i was very pleasantly surprised that it actually worked so today let's talk about a few things that i think you could completely get rid of in your kitchen or at a minimum scale them back so that your kitchen is really easy to keep clean too and you might find that you also enjoy cooking more well hi i'm dawn from the minimal mom we love sharing tips and tricks to help you simplify your house and i have a very fun announcement today as well uh i got to team up with kats from clutterbug and dana for my sob comes clean and we created a course called take your house back so i'll talk a little bit more about that towards the end but of course there are links in the description and it was so fun and so awesome and i think the information is gold but anyways we'll talk about that a little bit more towards the end right now let's talk about some things that i think you could just ditch in your kitchen so that it functions better and so that it's easier to keep clean isn't that what we all want right like why does the kitchen have to be so hard to stay on top of all right the first thing that i get a lot of flack about is simplifying our dishes and so here's what i would recommend that you decide how often do you want to either hand wash dishes or run the dishwasher so for me i was okay going down to everybody having one plate and one bowl and one cup because i'm okay with my kids hand washing their dishes after they use them for me what i found is that this means that there is never ever ever a huge stack of dishes next to the sink you know we'll use our pots and pans throughout the day but it's almost physically impossible for the dishes to stack up because we just don't have that many now on the other hand many are like well i would just like to run the dishwasher once a day right be able to make it through the day throw everything in and run it that's a great goal as well but for most of us we have enough dishes to make it multiple days if not a week and what does that mean huge stacks of dishes next to the sink and so i know this is counterintuitive we've talked about this before simplifying your dishes but the logic that well we never have clean dishes so we need to have more only makes it so that you can have bigger stacks i mean you're physically washing the same number of dishes on any given day right it's just that you have to wash them now otherwise you won't have dishes tomorrow and so i think this is definitely worth trying out this is where a quarantine bin can come in super handy uh tom did not buy into this at all in the beginning and now he's understanding especially as our kids have gotten to ages where they can wash their own dishes he's like oh yeah i get it now like we never have big stacks of dishes and it's magical that has been the number one thing that has made our kitchen easier to keep clean is limiting the plates bowls all those types of dishes now similarly i also limit my pots and pans and you don't have to go this far so for anything that i'm talking about today you have to retrofit it to you but i'm just going to tell you what we're doing that's working for us really well and then you decide if it might work for you too okay okay all right pots and pans uh we only have three burners that work we still only have three burners i've been saying this for like four years since we've done and it's totally fine like you just adapt right and so we only have three pots and pans and then i keep a stock pot and a dutch oven in the basement and so here's what's kind of cool though let me show you a new frying pan i just got okay so this was our old frying pan it's stainless steel i i try to stay away from teflon because you read that it's not super great for you right especially once it starts flaking off so we have had i have had this pan since before tom and i were married so for over 13 years 14 years i think and i could cook on it fine and not have everything like stick to it and it wasn't hard to wash but since other members of our household have been using it more and learning how to cook more it just seems like stuff gets so stuck on and then they don't want to wash it and it's always dirty so here's another thing to get rid of in your kitchen stuff you don't like it was constantly sitting next to the sink soaking with water in it so if we have pots and pans and other things that we don't like maybe we should get rid of them and that was the perfect time because it's christmas so you can ask for some upgrades but here's what's cool is that because we have so few pots and pans i don't mind spending a little money to replace my one frying pan because i know it gets used a ton and i can justify that cost so i actually just got this one on amazon isn't that pretty and then it's the copper so it doesn't stick i'll link to it because i think this would make a really great uh christmas gift but then it also has a lid this frying pan never had a lid so i was putting like i would put like my cookie sheets on top of it in her baking sheet so it worked like it was actually totally fine it really wasn't a big deal but i did decide now that we're upgrading that i would get a lid as well so this is our new frying pan all right let's keep going with like the controversial things well probably everything in the kitchen is controversial so all right let's talk about storage containers so i decided to get rid of really small containers because if i put something in here and put it in the fridge it's like it disappeared it's like it no longer existed because this container was too small and it would just get pushed to the back and fall to the back so even if i only have a little bit of food that i'm saving i still always put it in a big container so just so it doesn't get lost and i have a designated spot for leftovers in our fridge and that has made a huge difference another thing we need to probably declutter and scale back are the actual storage containers and so my favorite tip in this regard it comes from dana from a slop comes clean and she says to store your containers with their lids on yes this means you can't store as many but we don't need as many as we're all keeping and this is definitely something in kitchens that people hoard i've seen it and it's what's so frustrating about it is then you have to figure out how to store it all right so the push back is always that you can't store as many containers if they have the lid on and that's what we see as the good thing right but aren't these such a pain you have to store the containers you have some that are same sizes some that aren't you have to figure out a way to store the lids and so this takes a lot of effort to manage to store all these things to make sure like how we always ended up with more lids right did you find that too so by matching them and storing them they're self-limiting like you just can't accumulate too many again and they'll always have the lid matched and it is actually so much easier just to reach into your cupboard and pull this out than having to unstack them and pull up the lid i'm telling you you should just try it again use the quarantine bin throw your extra containers in there especially your small ones and see if you miss them but i'm going to guess you are going to be a fan of this system so another thing i've talked about quite a bit is getting rid of anything on your fridge and also anything extra on your kitchen counters but i think i have to make a caveat here so i've been learning more about cast from clutterbug her different organizing styles and they're basically based on two different distinctions are you a visual person it needs to be out in front of you or it's like it doesn't exist or are you non-visual where you prefer things to be behind the closed doors also are you a macro organizer or a micro and so many of my methods that i've recommended have been based on how i am which is i want stuff out of sight so i really like having my kitchen cabinets cleared off it's a visual cue for me that the kitchen is clean and everything's done and it just to me it really feels good to have it that highly simplified and i'm a macro organizer so i like big categories so like in our bathroom big bins just dump everything in it or my filing system big broad categories and that works awesome for me however i'm realizing that we're not all alike in this and so you might find that you do want to have some stuff on your fridge or on your counters but here's the catch with that if everything's visual this is what cass says if everything's visual then nothing's visual so if your whole counter has stuff on it or your whole fridge well nothing's actually standing out to you or reminding you that it needs to be done right so if you're going to keep stuff on your fridge it needs to be some strategic things if it's something you need to do or that you need to see it or you're going to forget about it similarly with your counters are there some things that need to be left out like your lunch bag in the morning or i don't know other things like that but again visual people tend to then keep too much out and then it defeats the purpose so be selective with what it is that you leave out or if you find yourself being a person that likes stuff out of sight then go ahead and tuck it all into cabinets and drawers for me that feels so much better and i know for those of you who have like went through our kitchen remodel i wanted to have more open shelves and now knowing myself this way i'm actually glad that we did it and we just did that one small section so something to keep in mind and we better talk about coffee mugs right these are my favorite coffee mugs from target still available but i know for whatever reason coffee mugs can be kind of hard to part with especially if they were given to you as a gift or a momento of some place you've traveled so i know they can be a little bit tricky but let's be realistic about how many we use also remembering this that a coffee mug was designed to be used to drink coffee from and if it's sitting in the back of your cabinet or on the top shelf collecting dust it's not actually getting to fulfill its purpose so wouldn't it be better to pass it on to someone who's actually going to use it for its purpose as opposed to it just sitting and collecting dust so it's one way to look at it let the coffee mugs fulfill their purpose in life right if that doesn't work i don't know it's again it's an inventory thing like having fewer to take care of and push around and dust i don't know that's it feels good to me but if that doesn't work let the coffee mug fulfill its purpose oh and this goes for travel mugs as well i know we all end up with our favorites right there's ones that the lids don't seal well or they drip on you or they don't actually keep the coffee hot could we just agree to part with those now it's okay it truly is okay all right so next let's talk about the makers the bread maker rice maker quesadilla maker panini maker pasta maker juice maker all of these things that are an individual appliance designed to make pretty much a single thing right like they'll tell you a waffle maker like you can put eggs in it and hashbrowns like there's all kinds of different recipes but are you using it for that are you using it for any of those purposes now of course if you use your rice maker every single day then i'm not expecting you to get rid of it right but when was the last time you evaluated all of these makers in your kitchen and here's what we have to take into consideration like our juicer we only use it pretty much when someone gets sick but when that happens i'm always so glad that we have it and because i've gotten rid of all of the other gadgets that we don't use i have room to keep it in our pantry cabinet even though we only use it a dozen times a year so it's okay to keep stuff that we don't use so frequently if we've gotten rid of other stuff and if we have room for it all right how about utensils so we only have one spatula pancake flipper whatever you want to call it we have two of these types of spatulas and the other day i was putting stuff away out of the dishwasher and i'm like why is this drawer why does it feel so tight now and like stuff isn't fitting in here very well well i realized that these guys had come in from the camper these were supposed to stay in there and they had made their way in here and so it was making the drawer like just like stuff didn't fit in it as well right and so the thing is is we didn't actually need another pancake flipper but it was just a good reminder that sometimes we just have extra to have extra like i like that if this gets dirty somebody has to wash it before they can use it again and so again it's just that whole idea of not having stuff stack up i like that this has to get washed so take a pass through those utensils and if you're just not sure toss them in the quarantine bin and let a few months pass and then you'll know for sure and whatever you do do not declutter your bundt cake pan i'm so sorry that i didn't get to all of you soon enough but truly if you are looking for a dessert that everyone will rave about you have to try our bundt cake recipes you can make them with gluten-free cake mixes and they're so easy you literally just dump everything into the mixer so just a public service announcement please don't declutter your bundt pan all right how about serving dishes serving bowls and other dishes we uh even though we couldn't have a big get together for thanksgiving we still made the whole meal right and you just that is like the day the year where there was like the most dishes ever right but i was counting and i'm like we still didn't even use that many serving dishes and so i love this tip to set your table like you're having thanksgiving or whatever your biggest meal of the year is so take your favorite serving pieces put them out on the table like you were going to do that and then it might be safe to get rid of the rest and so i'm not afraid you know maybe we've used a mixing bowl for serving chips sometimes or they'll do multi-purpose but most of us have way more mixing bowls and serving bowls than we actually need alright so those are a few places that you can get started in your kitchen but truly for me what made the biggest difference was limiting the dishes the cups and plates and bowls and especially the pots and pans because we just can't get big stacks of dishes anymore and that is magical it's so good and like i mentioned in the beginning i did want to let you know about this course that i did with cass and dana so cass is from clutterbug dana is from a slob comes clean and they're just two people that i felt like get it like their ideas totally line up with what i've experienced with my own house too and i love that we were all messy people first before we figured out these systems that work in our home to declutter it but then also to manage our homes as well so here's a little bit of what you can expect from that course well we're so excited to share with you our new course take your house back especially if decluttering hasn't worked for you in the past we want to support you in this process i think what makes this so special is not only do we all talk about the same amazing ways that simplifying change your life but we've all been there we're all recovering super slobs we know what it's like to be mortified by your place or overwhelmed not knowing where to start and in this course you're going to learn all the tools all of our tips and secrets to take back control of your stuff and your home so we're going to talk about three different specific areas which is how to have less how to actually declutter get stuff out of your house how to do less because that's what we all really want right and we're going to talk about how to want less because ultimately that's the goal is to really change the way that we view our homes and the way that we view life so i'm dawn from the minimal mom i'm cass from clutterbug i'm dana from a slopkim's clean and i think you're going to find that we understand what you're going through we've all been there where we felt overwhelmed we felt embarrassed we felt lazy we felt unorganized and together we're going to help you take your house back accepted to take back your house oh okay so no i think it's take your hands back oh yay yeah all right okay that's perfect and so of course we'll put links so that you can check out the course but it's available for pre-order right now it begins january 1st but we have a private facebook group that you also get to be a part of and we're going to be doing some facebook lives and other things in there leading up to the course launch and then once it launches we'll be able to go through this stuff together so it's just me a great support community also uh it can be useful for accountability if you need any of that so it's it's just gonna be so fun one of my big things when we started talking about the course was that the only way that i feel good about doing it is if there's information in it that you can't just get from our youtube videos and so it was important to me that there was new information and a new way of looking at it that might click with you if other stuff hasn't worked before and so i'm excited about that because i do think that it's different and i think that uh no matter what season of life you're in whatever stands in your way that makes it so you haven't been able to get on top of your house i feel like this course is gonna be able to help you through it and so i'm so excited about that so details below but we would love to see you over there and if not that's okay we'll all keep sharing all of our normal content and hope we can help you out that way as well so i love you i hope you have a really good day and i will visit with you again soon

Channel: The Minimal Mom

Views: 1,334,449

Keywords: minimalism, family minimalism, minimalist, the minimal mom, the minimalist mom, minimalist home, declutter, kitchen decluttering, minimalist kitchen, decluttering tips, decluttering how to

Id: zcPwmySecn0

Length: 17min 58sec (1078 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 08 2020