Is your kitchen home to a tonne of useless clutter? The kitchen is one of the most high traffic spots in your home, so it’s hardly surprising that it accumulates some of the most clutter. As things begin to amass, it can become harder and harder to start decluttering the kitchen – but not impossible!
From Mother’s Day stall mugs taking up cupboard space to mountains of paperwork piling up on the kitchen counter, cluttered spaces can be impossible to use properly and can feel overwhelming.
Here’s a foolproof guide on how to restore order into your cluttered kitchen.
Set yourself a goal
Decluttering your kitchen can quickly get ambiguous if you don’t quickly define some perimeters. So, before you even start, make sure you set yourself a goal. Why do you want to declutter?
We’re all guilty of having a questionable bottle of vanilla extract that you don’t remember buying sitting in our pantries. If your dilemma is an overabundant kitchen pantry, then centre your decluttering endeavours to throwing out old jars, containers and food.
Or, maybe your kitchen has become a home office and it’s filled with bills and other documents that keep piling up. In that case, you’ll need to consolidate your paperwork and create a filing system.
Six easy steps to declutter your kitchen
Once you’ve set yourself a goal, it’s time to move on to actually decluttering. Don’t fret, even though it feels like a monster task, decluttering the kitchen can be broken down into six easy steps.
- Remove anything that does not belong in the kitchen – Whether it’s mail, keys or kids toys, if it doesn’t belong in the kitchen remove it.
- Get rid of duplicate or unused items – From mugs to tupperware, kitchens are probably the most notorious spot for having duplicate items. Start by discarding doubles of things you already own, then move onto unused items. If you haven’t used it in the last six months and you don’t conceivably see yourself using it in the near future, it’s got to go.
- Clear the counters – The next step is to clear the counters. This will give the most visual effect of decluttering the kitchen. Our counters can quickly get cluttered with spice racks, coffee machines, knife blocks and other appliances. Clear the clutter from your counters first, then assess the things that permanently live on the counter and see if you find it a new home.
- Assess your current organisational method – This is one of the trickier steps to do. Does everything in your kitchen have a proper home? Do the places where you store things make sense? Does it have a logic? If not, you may need to spend some time reorganising where things live in the kitchen.
- Purge the fridge – The fridge can often be home to lots of clutter taking up precious space. Start by taking all the food out of your fridge and freezer. Check their expiration and make sure they’re still good to eat. Then, as you put things back, create an organisational system.
- Assess the pantry – Now you’ve done it for the fridge, it’s time to do it for the pantry. Take everything out of the pantry and assess the situation. Do you have expired jars of spices? Food colouring bottles you haven’t used in years? Throw them away. As with the fridge, when you’re putting things back in the pantry, try creating an organisational system.
