Still Working On The Kitchen…Water Bottle Overload

Can I say that de-cluttering is a non-glamorous activity? I’ve decided to go room-by-room and not move on until the chosen room is completely decluttered. Therefore, I am becoming bored by my slavish dedication to cleaning my kitchen. It’s a big kitchen. I am tired of it. I am still not done. This week, I took on the water bottles.

So, I try my darndest not to buy any new water bottles, but some of these things sneak in as free give-aways. There is the water bottle that came with my treadmill. There is one that is attributed to the Methodist Church in my hometown…I’m Catholic. There is one from my bank…I don’t recall why my bank of a dozen years would suddenly reward me with a water bottle, but, whatever.

I could go off on a tangent about coffee cups or pens, but even without that, I cannot explain the plethora of water bottles. I resist buying new ones with religious zeal, and yet even I agreed to let my younger daughter buy a Gatorade bottle. She said it was uniquely qualified to provide her with hydration during her softball practices. Funny how two of our older bottles have the same type of top…the “unique” feature that she used to convince me to buy her the new bottle.

But, back to my kitchen. The intentional water bottles, Camelbak’s, for example, were represented but in fractions. A broken valve, a missing straw, even missing the entire bottle top. How could I pitch any of these? A simple bottle cost over $12 and a logo-ed one double that. I tried to segregate them into useful categories, that is by how useful they are. That didn’t help. Then I asked my daughters to tell me which to eliminate. Nothing. Then I asked them to pick the ones they wanted to keep and suddenly there was a rush of movement.

They snatched up their favorites, then a few more. In the end more than half were slated to be saved. I had cleaned out a drawer for them and the selected bottles all fit. One, a memento of their gradeschool, which closed unexpectedly, was deemed not worth saving (it had no top and we think we found it lying around the grounds, already an outcast) so we recycled it. Several others belong to my son and they’ll go into a box in his room…more things for him to sort out for himself. We still have too many water bottles, but (lame excuse) I have a place to keep them and they are out of sight, so they get to stay.

Drawer by drawer, cupboard by cupboard, I vow to clean this room! I look forward to a clutter-free countertop and eliminating a dozen water bottles that had been on the counter, helps. Meanwhile, my kitchen is a disaster! I’ve pulled so  many things out of the drawers and cupboards for their own judgement days that the countertops are completely covered. Making dinner is a challenge. Time to double-down and get it done. Then, I’ll move on to the family room (shudder!).

Find the Joy in the Journey…and the Joy of an orderly water-bottle drawer!

 

 

Downsizing My Kitchen

Not too many years ago, my house was bustling with the activities of six people. I bought food in large quantities, often shopping at the warehouse store and snapping up cases of everything from canned chicken to individual packs of diced peaches. When I made pizza, I made three of them. When I cooked chili or stew, I whipped up a double batch. When I had over-ripened bananas, I’d make several loaves of banana bread. I have a standalone freezer and kept it full. The cupboards were never bare.

Now there are just two of us at home and I’ve finally started adjusting my buying habits after having to dump one too many gallons of milk down the drain and tossed one too many black bananas in the trash. The refrigerator, due to my slowly cleaning it out over the last few weeks, is pretty bare, but my cupboards were still full. I decided to clean out the kitchen completely before moving on to another room. With this method, I could slowly, methodically, de-clutter my whole house. It was a simple idea which has grown in proportion.

First, I took all the food out of the cupboards and sorted it. I ended up with a shockingly large group of items that were past their expiration dates. My frugal mind couldn’t really wrap itself around the waste. I set it aside and wondered if maybe I could use some of it, anyway. Honey…everyone knows that honey never goes bad. Then again, what passes for honey these days just might. There were diced peaches, canned tomatoes, sauces, beans, evaporated milk, enchilada sauce, and other odds and ends.

Fortunately, I found a lot more unexpired items than expired. I looked at the eclectic mix of canned fish, various types of beans, tomato paste, grilling sauce, soup, etc. and decided to use it up rather than put it away. My first attempt was to make chili to use up some of the beans and maybe some of the expired tomatoes.

I pulled out my crockpot and started opening cans. I opened one of the cans of tomatoes and paused. It had a darker swirl in the center which looked a bit green. Down the drain it went…and off to the store I went to buy more canned tomatoes…but only as much as called for in the recipe. No more stockpiling until I have things under control and sized for a household of two.

I always loved those magazine articles about how to have a well-stocked pantry. A pantry stocked so that you could whip up a gourmet appetizer for unexpected guests or manage a homey family meal when you hadn’t gotten to the grocery store recently. The problem, as I realize while gazing at an enormous jar of Greek olives, is that no one drops in unexpectedly and even if they do, I forget I have the olives. Now they’ve expired.

So, I’ll get rid of the expired food and we’ll slowly work our way through the still-good food. I still have much work to do in the kitchen, too many pots and pans, too many gadgets, and the world’s largest supply of reusable water bottles, some of them missing important parts. Here’s to de-cluttering the kitchen and moving on to the family room.

Find the Joy in the Journey…and a love of canned beans would be nice too!