declutter

Kitchen Minimalism

/ rachelgoes262 / Leave a comment

2018 is the year that I aim to minimize my kitchen. First, I am making the transition from plastic to glass. Second, I am trying to eat up the food I have in my house so that I don’t have a bunch hoarded. Third, I am focusing on nutrition and health both for running and for life.

The first thing I did this month was to replace plastic with glass. I now have 5 glass Pyrex dishes to use for work lunches. I figure since I have made the change from 70-hour workweeks to 40-hour workweeks, that I actually have time to cook at least one meal a day at home now, so I no longer need to stuff the freezer with individually portioned meals.

There are 37 sets of plastic wear in a box s as a result of my switch. 37 sets. This includes the plastic dish plus the lid as a set. I kept two sets of plastic wear for use when traveling, as it is typically easier to travel with plastic than glass. There is now significantly more space in my cupboards.

Not only is there physically more cupboard space, there are also fewer dishes to wash. Out of all household chores, I despise washing dishes. While I am sure it is some sort of illusion, it feels like I am using fewer dishes as well. Instead of grabbing a plastic dish for whatever, I am now using my glass dishware and being more mindful. I have actually been eating off my plates instead of just throwing something in a plastic bowl and microwaving it.

The kitchen cupboards are full of dishware. I have a separate stand-alone “cupboard” for food. I have more cupboard space where I live now than any other place I have lived. If I can declutter the cupboards to the point where I could fit some food in them too, that would be ideal. If I were to ever move someplace, I am more than 90% certain I would have less cupboard space than I have now. Decluttering cupboards makes sense as a long-term goal.

Cupboards are almost like the Narnia of kitchen clutter. As long as everything fits, people don’t tend to pay much attention to what is in the cupboards, especially those that are above the stove or refrigerator. Not only am I trying to clean out my cupboards, but also I am trying to eat healthier by switching from plastic to glass.

Second, I am trying to eat up the food that is in my house so that I can meal plan better. This is most definitely a work in progress. I did go to the grocery store recently. Mostly, I need things to go with what I already have in this effort to eat up the food. I’m sure everyone has a shelf in their pantry or food cupboard where you find a random can of fruit or soup way in the back. Eat it or donate it.

Third, I am focusing on nutrition. I have been trying to be sure to eat more fruits and vegetables this year. This will actually necessitate more trips to the grocery store. I kind of got away from fresh food in the year I was recovering from my stroke, as it was easier to make other things. Beanie weenies, anyone?

There are still moments when I have symptoms and difficulties from my stroke. While I know that nutrition was not the cause (that’s what they say), I definitely need good nutrition to run my marathon this year. I’m hoping that by minimizing my kitchen I can be in more control of food and meals.

What are some other tips for kitchen minimalism?

  • Remove duplicates. I am not one of these people that can survive with just one of everything in the kitchen. I like (and have) to cook. Be smart about this one. Do you need two stovetop saucepans? Yes, when making both potatoes and green beans for Thanksgiving. Do you need five saucepans? Not when there are only 4 burners on the stove. Sometimes you need duplicates, but most times you don’t.
  • Remove items not in use. Again, be smart about this. The turkey baster may not be in use now, but it will be come November. If you have a bunch of cake decorating equipment and haven’t had time to bake in years, do you need to hold onto that, or would someone else enjoy using it?
  • How much dishware do you need? I am a one-person household and downsized from service for 8 down to service for 4. If you are a family of 3 or 4, I understand having service for 8 for when there is company. How much do you entertain? It all depends on lifestyle.
  • The silverware drawer. In most kitchens, this is one of the most cluttered drawers beside the junk drawer. Be sure to apply the above rules to silverware and utensils. When I went through my utensils, I discovered I have 11 spatulas. Do I need 11 spatulas? Nope. Maybe you do. Again, it all depends on lifestyle. You don’t want to purge the spatulas and then find yourself without one. Be realistic.
  • Box it up. The kitchen is the one area where I highly recommend boxing items for a period of time before donating just to be sure that you do not need any of those items. If you have 11 spatulas and box 7 of them, can you survive with 4? Try it and find out. I bet you can survive with 4.

Have any more tips for kitchen minimalism?

Peace, Love & 2018

/ rachelgoes262 / Leave a comment

Peace

Sometimes you need a change of scenery. Sometimes you just need to change your point of view. I recently changed clubs for my gym membership. It was a great choice. In this instance, I definitely needed a change of scenery.

Mostly, the new club is easier to drive to, has more parking available, and better hours to accommodate my bizarre schedule. I typically rename the treadmill “the freak mill” because I hate being on it and the people at the gym are a little crazy. However, this year, I am just happy to be running. I’ve also changed my point of view. I am so thankful to be running again after my lost season due to stroke.

My 2018 running season is planned. I start training for my marathon the first week of June. That means that the first six months of 2018 are all about building base and preparing to implement my new training program. Running brings a lot of peace to my life, and I am definitely in a good place right now with my running schedule.

Love

Introducing … Simon.  (Photo above.) Simon has been apart of our lives for about two months now. I know I said I would not adopt again and that Jude was going to be an only child. Except Jude was quite vocal about being alone (and he is typically the shyest cat EVER). I was apprehensive about adopting again. I was not sure if I was ready. I actually visited and played with Simon for about three weeks in the shelter before adopting him.

I’m glad we did. Simon is 1 ½ and has a lot of energy. He is bringing Jude out of his shell and keeping me on my toes. He behaves like a little demon, but he is so darn cute that it’s hard to be mad when he’s acting his age.

Simon has brought the love and a sense of normalcy back to our household. Looking back, I can see that not only was I super depressed (and still sad) about Kitty dying, but I was depressed before Kitty died. I took care of him and did his cancer medication for over a year. Our entire household felt like death for about a year and a half.

Simon has brought the love and sun back for Jude and me.

2018

While minimizing my life and living simply is an ongoing journey, my major goal for 2018 is my kitchen. With kitchen changes, come food and nutrition changes, so this will hopefully be a positive for both my running and management of my food allergies.

I now have five glass Pyrex bowls for work lunches. My goal is to get rid of all the plastic in the kitchen and use glass only.

All the plastic is going into a box for a year. Typically, I put donation items in a box and get rid of the box as soon as it’s full. Most people will suggest putting things in a box and saving the box for three months. If after three months you have not opened the box and don’t need anything in it, then get rid of the stuff. With the plastic items, I am boxing them for a year.

The reason why I am boxing kitchen plastic for a year is that even though I am confident that I can go glass only in the kitchen, plastic is useful when I am traveling. It is lighter weight and won’t break. So I am boxing the plastic for a year and only taking out what I absolutely need for travel this year, which will include my usual camping trip and marathon trip. This way, when I completely get rid of kitchen plastic next year, I will only keep enough plastic pieces absolutely necessary for travel. I figure this is better than trying to guess or choosing an arbitrary number, like keep 5 plastic containers.

I am also going to be menu planning this year to be sure that I am managing my food allergies well, getting all my nutrients, and using up food. I have a lot of food in my house. Part of it is the multiple food allergies – I stockpile because it is challenging to find things I can eat.

This year, I have made a 5-day emergency food kit. The recommendation is 3 days, but I am going for a 5-day due to the food allergies and the fact that during the blizzard of 2017, I was literally snowed in my house for four days. The snowplow was stuck at the end of my road, so we could not go anywhere if we wanted.  This way, even if I eat all the food in the house (unlikely), I have a 5-day supply emergency supply.

Now that I have the 5-day emergency kit, my goal is to eat the food in the house so that there is not so much of it and so that I can do a better job of food planning instead of just having a bunch of random things everywhere. For example, in addition to the food cupboard, I also have two storage racks of food. My goal is to just have the food in the cupboard. As long as we are not snowed in, I can get to the store at least once a week, so there is no reason for all this food. Time to focus on nutrition and planning.

Peace, love, and running for 2018. Happy New Year!

 

 

Never Say Never

/ rachelgoes262 / 1 Comment

All through this minimalist/simplifying process, the one thing I said I would not touch is my CD music collection. Typically, every person has that one thing that they will not touch, and for me, that was music. For some, books are hard to declutter, for others, their closet, and for others still, the boxes of artwork their children made.

This week, I actually got rid of a shoebox full of CDs.

A few weeks ago, I realized that I was only listening to some of my CDs. There are many CDs that I have not bothered to listen to quite literally in years. Similar to how we wear 20% of our wardrobes 80% of the time, I realized that I was doing the same thing with my CD collection.

I have also come to the point where my collection is so massive that it is overwhelming. I have two containers of CDs stored in a closet. I physically do not have enough space in my living room to display the entire collection of CDs. The idea behind storing some in the closet was that I would be inclined to listen to the CDs physically displayed in the living room more often. This has not happened.

I’ve decided to cull the CDs.

Decluttering my music collection is one of the most challenging categories to declutter in my home. Like many others, I thought books would be the hardest to downsize. Books were surprisingly easy. As with DVDs, I only keep books that I have read more than once. There is no point in keeping a book if I do not intend on reading it again.

Sidebar: my library has begun printing how much money you have saved each year by using the library. They use list prices to ascertain that if you had gone out and bought the book/DVD/CD new instead of borrowing from the library, you would have spent so much money. I have saved over $400 so far by using my library this year.

What makes CDs challenging is the fact that I have listened to them all multiple times. Yet the collection is so massive that it is overwhelming. The very first CD that left the house was one that I listened to in college back in the 1990s. I put it in the CD player and could not for the life of me figure out why I had the CD or why I had listened to it so much 20 years ago. That album is crap. I suppose that music tends to just fit depending on the points we were at in life. Yet this “crap” album had no memories associated with it, other than I remember listening to it back in the day.

The albums in the shoebox that left are all albums that either holds no meaning, or when I listen to the CD, I only really like one or two songs on the album. I do not think one song is worth it to hold onto an entire CD. If I want to hear that one song that badly, I’m sure I can find it someplace online when I need a “quick fix” of listening to one particular song.

Getting rid of one shoebox of CDs is huge for me. Music is the one category I said I would not touch in the process of simplifying my life. However, I am learning the economic theory of diminishing returns and that you can have too much of a good thing. When your music collection is so large that it is overwhelming and no longer enjoyable, then it is time to curate that collection.

In the grand scheme of things, one shoebox of CDs is very small. There is still 1 and ¾ of a container of CDs stored in the closet. I’m sure this is going to be a slow journey, as music is my most challenging category, but the ultimate goal is to get down to the amount of CDs that can be displayed in the living room without having any stored in the closet.

Before anyone says to just digitize everything, keep in mind that digital clutter is still clutter. I’m not about to make the conversion from physical clutter to digital clutter. Not to mention, I’m not a huge digital person anyways. Especially with music, I like to have the physical product for the experience. Remember things called concept albums? How album covers, art, and packaging all contributed and added to the music inside to create a story? I’m really into that experience.

As we move to simplify our lives to focus more on what’s important, we all have that one category that we won’t touch. That’s ok. If decluttering your home and purging items is painful, then you won’t stick with it because it feels like punishment. For me decluttering my home is not punishment, it is a sort of freedom in that the less items I have to clean and maintain, the more time I have to spend with the people who matter the most. The only reason why I am finally touching that one “never declutter” category is that it has become so overwhelming that it no longer brings joy.

What is your “never” category? Is it still sacred and untouched? Or, have you started to downsize that category? What strategies did you use to attack the most challenging category to simplify?

Revisiting The Rule of 3

/ rachelgoes262 / 2 Comments

jude-christmas-2016

I have previously written about how I incorporated the rule of three  into my decluttering goals. At the time, my goal had been to ensure that surfaces contained no more than three items that I found to be either meaningful or useful. To go all KonMari  again, I do not see the point in wasting space to contain items that do not bring me joy. I also do not see the point in wasting precious time in cleaning, dusting, or organizing items that are not either meaningful or useful.

I am proud to declare that I have been quite successful in minimizing all surfaces so that they only contain three items.

Having surfaces that contain only three items simplified my life in such a way that I decided to take the rule of three and run with it. I also applied the rule of three to my walls. I went through each wall in my house, and there are now only three decorative items per wall. I cannot tell you how much easier it is to clean my house now that there are only three items per wall and three items per surface.

When I applied the rule of three to my walls, I noticed that many items that were on my walls did not bring me joy. I decided to replace those items with things that do bring me joy. For example, I had some of my photography printed and framed, and now my artwork is gracing my walls, were previously was some commercial print that I neither liked no held any personal meaning to me.

Some walls in my house have less than three items on them. Some have only two items, and I am looking at a wall now that only has one thing on it. It is very relaxing to sit in my living room either before or after a long day and be able to enjoy sitting there. I also now have less things to dust, windex, and clean.

The rule of three inadvertently spilled over into other aspects of the declutter process as well. I culled my wardrobe again. While I am one of these people who will probably never have only 33 or 37 or 42 items of clothes, I do want to be sure that I only have clothes that fit my body well, that I love to wear, and that fit into my dresser and closet without overflowing my available space.

My dresser contains four drawers, and I have decided that one drawer is for pajamas and nightwear, and everything must fit into the drawer. If the drawer starts to overflow, then I need to get rid of items so that everything fits comfortably. I applied the same concept to all underclothes, such as socks.

One drawer contains my jeans and other pants that do not need to be hung in the closet. My work pants are hung in the closet so that they are not wrinkled. As most Americans. I realized I had an obscene number of jeans. I culled my jeans so that I only have three pairs. That is way more than I wear in a typical week. I kept my three most favorite pairs. Applying the rule of three to my jeans has also allowed me to upgrade. I was able to replace one of the $10 pair of Walmart jeans with a $40 pair of Levi’s, which I’m sure will last me much longer, and I am way happier with the fit and feel of them.

In applying the rule of three to the closet, I have three sweaters for when it is cold in the winter, three summer dresses, three hoodie sweatshirts, and three suit jackets. I currently have five pairs of work dress pants, but that will soon be decreasing to four. I have a hard time finding dress pants that fit, so I like to keep more than three pairs of those.

So while I may not have an overall goal number concerning the amount of clothing I aim to own, I have been trying to apply the rule of three to individual categories of clothing. Of course, for shirts, I have way more than three. Shirts do not seem to be as sturdy as pants. For work, I have nine v-neck shirts in various colors (that I will need to gradually replace, as they are becoming worn). I am hoping to get that number down to seven.

I do have a drawer of shirts that I wear when not working that include running shirts, baseball, hockey, and football shirts. I honestly do not know the number, but they all fit quite comfortably into their assigned drawer, so I am not concerned about their actual number. What I have been trying to do is to be sure that I am wearing everything, and if anything is in any way uncomfortable or does not fit well, then it goes into the donate pile.

I only want to be surrounded by the things that I love.

Have you incorporated the rule of three into your life? Have you applied it to surfaces, walls, or drawers? I am finding that it allows me more time to be with the ones I love and do the things I love because I spend less time cleaning and having to weed through mounds of clothing.

Even if the rule of three seems daunting, start with one surface. Choose just one stand or shelf and apply the rule of three. See if it helps to simplify your life.