One Kitchen Decluttering Task You Might Put Off Too Late This Year

If you prepare any amount of food for the holidays—whether it’s one casserole or a whole spread—you still have to tackle one big hurdle: Sifting through your kitchen cabinets for the right gear.

If you’re a particularly organized person, that task might be as easy as sliding one dish out of a stack. But if your collection of kitchen tools and servingware is a little more chaotic than controlled, your holiday cooking efforts could be thwarted by upper-cabinet avalanches and uber-packed kitchen drawers that refuse to close (at least not before some random sharp thing has the chance to prick your hands).

If you wait until that day to notice the problem, you’re not going to be in the position to do anything about it. But if you audit your kitchen gear today, you’ll have the time and space to declutter and clean the supplies you need to finish all your holiday cooking.

Here’s how to do it…

This could go one of two ways, depending on how big your collection is.

If all your kitchen tools and serving pieces are confined to a few cabinets or drawers, I would empty all of those storage spaces. Then group like items together (on the counter or floor or wherever there’s room). Go through each category and decide if there’s anything you can get rid of. It’s fine to hang on to everything, if you have space to store it, but I bet there are some things you don’t use often enough—or don’t like enough—to keep. Cast those things aside to be donated or given away.

Once you know which things you’d like to keep, give those things a quick clean-up before you put them away, so they’ll be 100-percent ready to do their duty this season. If anything looks dusty, give it a wipe-down or a spin through the dishwasher. And if you have glassware that’s collected a cloudy film, try wiping them down with a bit of white vinegar. Once your gear is spotless, you can put everything back in its place.

If you have lots of kitchen tools and serving pieces, stored in different places, you may want to skip the everything-out method and instead assess those different spots—including anything you keep in storage—looking for things you can declutter or clean. When you find something that you can feel good about getting rid of, set it aside for donations. When you find something that’s dusty or cloudy, clean it so it’s ready for action when the time comes.

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