Photo credit: www.bonappetit.com
Gaining clarity on your kitchen space often involves a thorough decluttering process, reminiscent of Marie Kondo’s organizational principles. To start, prepare a spacious area on your counter or table where you can lay out all your kitchen essentials—including cookware, gadgets, dishes, cookbooks, and any other items that typically occupy your kitchen. If your inventory is substantial, consider tackling this task in segments based on specific categories, which can help streamline the process.
As you begin to uncover food storage containers you may not have recognized (such as that juicer you impulsively purchased ages ago), it is common to find duplicates among your items. Be decisive as you eliminate redundancy and dispose of anything that has not been used in a significant time frame. For instance, if it’s been years since you last baked muffins, you likely don’t need multiple muffin tins, perhaps even no muffin tin at all—especially since it wasn’t included in the new list of essentials you are curating.
Designate Your Essentials
As you select items to keep, place them in a specified area without packing them just yet. It’s advisable to first review all kitchen components—including cookware, dishes, cutlery, glassware, gadgets, utensils, cookbooks, and kitchen textiles—because viewing your selected items together might reveal that you still have more than necessary.
This stage allows you to further refine your collection and explore smart storage solutions that can enhance the functionality of your new kitchen space.
Opt for Efficient Alternatives
Consolidate Your Cookware
When downsizing, remember the principle that less can indeed be more. By trading in a bulky cookware set for a few highly versatile pieces, you can significantly optimize kitchen storage. Most home cooks find that a simple arrangement consisting of a saucepan, a skillet (in your preferred material, be it stainless steel, cast iron, carbon steel, or nonstick), and a quality enameled cast-iron Dutch oven is sufficient for a variety of cooking tasks.
The Dutch oven is particularly invaluable due to its multifunctionality—ideal for simmering, sautéing, slow-cooking, boiling, browning, braising, deep-frying, and even baking.
If your kitchen resembles a small appliance shop, it might be time to reassess your collection of countertop gadgets. Consider replacing them with a compact convection oven that can perform multiple functions, including those of a toaster, slow cooker, dehydrator, and air fryer. Some state-of-the-art models, such as the Anova Precision Oven and Breville’s Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro, come equipped with steam or sous vide functionalities, often surpassing the precision and efficiency of traditional ovens. My experience with a countertop convection oven has been transformative; I now use my full-size oven primarily for storage.
Years prior to my official downsizing due to a major life change, I had already removed over 60% of our family’s everyday dishware from active use and stored it away. This shift allowed us to embrace a lifestyle centered on necessity, eliminating the incessant pile of dirty dishes on the counter. If a plate was ever needed before I could load the dishwasher, hand-washing became a simple alternative.
Source
www.bonappetit.com