We know what you're wondering: How does adding gear to your home leave you with more space? Although each of these might take up a little extra room on the counter or in the closet, you'll end up with more living space overall thanks to the things you get to toss now that the new gear's taken their tasks.
A Digital Kitchen Scale
What you get to throw away: Measuring spoons and measuring cups.
The New York Times has a great piece on why more at-home cooks and cookbook publishers should adopt weight—not volume—as the ingredient standard. Measuring out ingredients on an accurate digital scale means everything can get measured and mixed in one bowl.
A Wet-Dry Vac
What you get to throw away: Your old vacuum and the under-the-sink-stash of clean up towels.
It's OK if you have a larger-than-you'll admit pile of junk towels collecting mildew below your sink. You need them, right? In case there's a huge spill that needs cleaning. Unless, of course, you have a high-powered wet-dry vacuum that's as capable of cleaning up the milk as it is the Cheerios.
A Scanner
What you get to throw away: Any file or stack of papers you've been storing for safe keeping.
It's a good idea to keep a years' worth of bank statements in case you need them to prove income or file your tax returns. It's not a good idea, however, to let all of those documents take over your home office. Get a scanner and digitize everything, then store the files on your machine... and a backup machine... and maybe somewhere secure in the cloud, too.
(Images: Flickr member Yodster licensed for use under Creative Commons, Flickr member tbone_sandwich licensed for use under Creative Commons, Doxie Scanner Sends, Shares, Stores on the Cloud)
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Whoever wrote this article has never used a wet-dry vac. Owning one of these does not obviate the need for a regular vacuum cleaner. And if you're using the wet dry vac for what ppl normally use it for, i.e. sucking up flooded basements, pooling water in driveways, etc., you will never want that gross vac inside your nice livingroom or near your nice livingroom carpets. They are cumbersome to use, heavy, and not suited for carpets at all.
I have that exact digital kitchen scale in pink from Target! I used it last night for measuring equal parts of raspberries and sugar to make jam.
ALSO, it's great for shipping small packages (up to 11 lbs, well... depending on your scale really!). You can measure their weight on it and print out your own labels at home (I know USPS has that service, maybe others too?). I'm an Etsy seller.
does measuring all ingredients by weight seem crazy to anyone else. if i need 1 tbsp of flour, i just dip the 1tbsp into the container, level it off and you are gone. if you were doing it buy weight that seems like a lot of unnecessary steps to get something correct.
jmorey, leaving aside that measuring flour is imprecise (flour settles quite a bit), using weight for all ingredients means you only use one bowl when mixing something up. Just put the bowl on, press tare, add ingredient one from package, press tare, ingredient two, tare, etc. It's really easy and there's no digging for every required measuring cup and spoon.
Measuring by weight is also great for portion control. Some foods just aren't made to be measured by the cupful.
Agree completely with meemster's comment about wet-dry vacs. You'd have to clean the vac after sucking up spilled milk, or you'd have one heck of a stinky vac - and cleaning the vac seems like a bigger chore than grabbing a rag for clean-up duty.
I have the same same scale, too, and use it for all kinds of things in addition to kitchen duty. Weighing packages to purchase postage online is its next most frequent use. My postmistress praises the accuracy of this scale.
thats pretty gross using a vaccum for spilled milk......
a vaccum for pet is already smelly enough. sucking up milk will take it up another notch
Unfortunately, most cookbooks do not have weight measurements. This post is bonkers!
If you measure all of your ingredients into one bowl, your baked goods won't turn out very well. A simple but essential rule for great baked goods: Measure and sift all the dry ingredients in one bowl. Measure all the wet ingredients into a second bowl. (Surprise! Sugar is a liquid. I know. I didn't believe it either. Turns out it makes a big difference.) Mix the wet ingredients well. With the bowl of dry ingredients in your mixer running at a slow speed, add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients.
Some recipes will vary these instructions for specific purposes unique to those recipes. In general, though, if you're going to bake, you're going to use two bowls.