De-cluttering

DE-CLUTTERING ROSIE BARRON IS THE TIDY COO

Rosie Barron is The Tidy Coo, an award winning Professional Organiser. Scotland’s only Master KonMari Consultant and member of APDO (the Association of Professional Declutterers and Organisers). Rosie lives in Aberdeenshire with her husband, four Home Educated children, eight ponies, five dogs, three cats, four bunnies, chickens, ducks and fish which all Spark Joy.

If you have been following along with this little series of decluttering, then so far you will have covered your Clothes, Books, Papers,

Toiletries and Christmas. This time we are going to look at the Kitchen.

Kitchens can be divided into three main categories – Food, Cookware and Tableware. I like to start with food when I’m helping people to declutter their kitchens as it’s often the easiest one to get started on. I hate food waste and so I regularly go through my cupboards to check what is in date and what is getting close to going out of date to make sure that we waste as little as possible. When doing food, further divide it into fridge, freezer and cupboard categories. You don’t need to take all of your food out at the same time, but you do need to make sure that you have pulled out everything in a single category. For example, all of your tins at one time, or all of your pasta. First thing is to go through the food and check for expiry dates.

Some expiry dates (Best Before) may be able to be taken with a pinch of salt, but those are generally so long dated that I would say that if something has been in your cupboard long enough to go out of date, then you are simply not going to use it, and you should discard it. Once you have discarded those that are out of date, take a look at the food that is left and decide if you are actually going to use it. Sometimes, especially around Christmas, we are bought food that we simply won’t use, or we buy more than we will ever use. Crackers for example, or dates. If you are not going to use them, then don’t put them back in your cupboard only to throw them out when they go out of date, give them to a food bank or to someone who will use them.

Images: Laura Walter Photography

When replacing the food back into its storage, make sure that you store like with like (so all the pasta together) and store the shortest dated at the front.

The second category to look at is Cookware – that is all your baking and cooking equipment. As with every category, everyone will have different amounts of this that they need. We cook mostly from scratch in this household of six, and my husband loves to bake, so we have quite a lot! We still only have the things that we actually need though, and we do regularly go through things to check that we haven’t managed to acquire extras. When you do this category, do make sure that you handle everything. It’s easy to open a drawer, decide that you use everything in it and close it again. Don’t do this! Take everything out of its storage, group it in categories and make sure that you physically handle every item. DO clean the spaces whilst the stuff is out too!

The final category in the kitchen is Tableware and this is everything that you need to eat with, so cutlery, crockery and glassware. Once again, bring each category together and check that you use it. I have a couple of specific points in this category. The first is that I often find that people have large numbers of things for entertaining that they never use. Now if you are someone who regularly caters for twenty, then of course, you will find it useful to have place settings for twenty. However, if you only usually cater for four, and occasionally cater for eight, and have once in your life catered for ten, I’m going to suggest that twenty place settings are too many. And yet, I come across this many quite frequently! Clogging up homes and almost never used. Keep to the number that you use frequently, or at least once a year. If you suddenly find yourself catering for the five thousand, then you can borrow from someone else. Or go out to a restaurant and let someone else take the strain!

The second point that I would like to make in this particular category is that of keeping things for best. Now obviously, you don’t want your small children using your best crystal (I still keep my teenagers away from my nice glassware), but that doesn’t mean that YOU shouldn’t use it. Again, something I often find in the homes that I work in is large amounts of crockery, cutlery and glassware that is kept for best. Brought out once or twice a year, if it is lucky. This is such a waste of something that you love! Please use it more regularly. Tastes change between generations and your most beloved possessions will probably not be most beloved by your children and grandchildren and will be discarded. Use the best now, even if that means suffering breakages. Better to be broken through use, than to be thrown away unused. This goes for all categories – use the nice toiletries and the good perfume, wear your nice clothes, drink the good wine! Don’t let it waste away in a cupboard.

If you’ve enjoyed this article, then do pick up Rosie’s new book – Easy Life, from Chaos to Calm with Minimal Effort. Available through all good retailers.

Visit: www.thetidycoo.com

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