#kitchenkomono

For phase 2 of the kitchen komono, I tackled the other two miscellany cupboards.  The under sink cupboard and the (hopefully titled) baking cupboard.  In the latter, I had tried to combine all of the baking tins and other equipment, but (as you can see below) it wasn’t really working.

After I pulled everything out of the cupboard, and discarding quite a few unused baking tins (I had duplicates, I have a bundt insert I had never used, I had cookie cutters that just didn’t work properly) I realised that they would be better off elsewhere.  Having made space in the pan cupboard for the baking trays last time, I set about making space for the cake tins and other baking paraphernalia in the same cupboard.  This involved removing all of my electrical kitchenware, which it turns out fitted perfectly into the vacated cupboard.

Pans and plates had already been whittled down to the good stuff, when I started Konmari before, so I just needed to rearrange them.  I condensed them all into one cupboard, with our everyday plates on the top, and our special occasion-ware on the bottom.  We use all of our plates on the regular, not just for guests but to make a Sunday Dinner, or a special meal feel a bit more special.  We have everyday plates because a) we’re clumsy and b) I really love all of them, but don’t have full sets of anything.

Next was the under-sink cupboard.  Even with the baking trays removed it was a MESS.  I pulled everything else, threw out all of the almost-but-not quite finished cleaning supplies, the hundreds of damp rags and the cutlery tray which we didn’t use. 

I then sorted the remainder into like-things and put them back in the baskets (which were already there!  Buried and collapsed!).  Laundy liquid, diswasher tablets and everyday cleaning sprays are at the front for ease of access. 

All this took much less time than I thought, so I had time to go through my kitchen drawers.  I was pretty ruthless with them, chucking out excessive duplicate tools, but they actually weren’t in too bad shape.  Our cups I had already been through, and we didn’t have a problem with glasses (they had been naturally whittled down by clumsiness). 

Paperwork was super easy this time around, as I’d thrown out almost everything the first time round.  It was comforting to know that I hadn’t needed any of the stuff I’d ‘erroneously’ purged 4 years ago.  I emptied out our concertina file (which had got shuffled over time), and the drawer that had been serving as our inbox for a year.  Chucked out anything non-vital (almost everything) and put everything else into a box file.  I keep a letter divider on top of this (leftover from a previous tidying attempt) to serve as an inbox for anything that needs to be actioned.

I was super eager to start on the kitchen a soon as I reached the komono stage.  In particular I knew that the tupperware cupboard was in need of attention.  When we moved house last year, my mum was amazed at the sheer quantity of tupperware containers we owned - “why do you need all of this?” she exclaimed - and I explained how vital it all was, of course.

Fast forward a year, and every morning I am swearing as something topples out of the cupboard and into the dog’s water bowl.  I was finally ready to deal with the monster I had created.

First job was, of course, to pull everything out of the cupboard and take a look at what we had.  I separated it off into tupperware, other food storage and other cooking items.  My mum was right about the tupperware.  I started by discarding all the rubbish quality stuff - we had about 25 that we’d clearly been saving from previous takeaways, those with missing or warped lids (some of them weren’t quite as microwave safe as advertised).  I kept 2 medium and one large rectangular boxes, 2 each of the small and smaller ones handy for snacks and sauces as well as some character snack boxes and a book shaped lunchbox which I particularly love.

I then went through the other food containers and cooking equipment and made sure that I wanted to keep it all, nesting a round bowl, into a round tupperware, into a round cake holder to save space.  When I finished, I had a spare shelf, so I moved a bunch of other miscellaneous cooking equipment out of the pan cupboard onto the bottom shelf.