If you’re interested in whittling down your kitchen into a Capsule Kitchen, but don’t know where to start – here is a 21-day challenge where each day you take on 1 mini-task to streamline and declutter your kitchen. This Capsule Kitchen challenge is the *perfect* way to do some cleaning in the near year, spring cleaning, or really any time you want to get your kitchen in order. Welcome to the Capsule Kitchen challenge!
Here are a few tips for practicing kitchen minimalism:
- Know your priorities. There isn’t one set of ingredients everyone must have in their pantry – eat and cook what you love! Keep in your kitchen the things to make what you love!
- Stop over-committing. Buy ingredients you’ll use. Google substitutes for ingredients to see if there’s a hack for an ingredient you don’t need to buy. Also, if you’re not sure you’ll use it, don’t buy it – and if you need to run back to the store if you’re for sure going to need that one thing, so be it.
- Get rid of clutter. Reduce your kitchen gadgets/pots/pans by half.
- Buy from the bulk bin for sugar, flour, beans and rice; store in glass jars and bring the jars to the store to buy these staples. Use reusable produce bags, too.
- Lastly, practice the 60-second rule: if you can clean it or put it away in less than 60 seconds, do it right then and there.
Ok let’s do this!!!
1. Take inventory of your spice rack. Put in one box or shelf all the things you know you use a lot. Put on a second box or shelf all the things you can’t remember the last time you used. Every time you use something from your second box/shelf, move it into the first shelf. (The spices/pantry items you don’t use after 3 weeks will go!)
2. Buy jars for your dry goods (rice, beans, flours, sugars); transfer over any bags of rice, beans, flour, sugar into your new jars, throw out those old bags. Moving forward, replenish your dry pantry goods from the bulk section at the supermarket.
3. Review your cookbooks – trade them in on Amazon, sell or donate the cookbooks you don’t love or haven’t opened in the past year.
4. Clean out your plastic bags/paper bags and consolidate down to the bags still in good repair, shifting towards using more reusable bags.
5. Sell or donate 5 pots/pans you haven’t used in the past 6 months. Better yet, reduce your kitchen pots/pans by half.
6. Donate or recycle old/random/mismatched mugs that you don’t love.
7. Clean out your fridge – anything past the expiration date or has mold, goes in the trash.
8. Clean out the freezer – things with freezer burn or food you haven’t touched in a year goes.
9. Throw out old onions, potatoes or garlic that have sprouted growths.
10. Check the expiration date of your olive oil. Olive oil expires!
11. Make dinner with pantry ingredients you already have that you didn’t throw out 🙂
12. Recycle any alcohol bottles that are empty or nearly empty. (Make yourself a cocktail if there’s just enough left!)
13. Donate any cookie sheets that are warped.
14. Clean out the cabinet under the sink.
15. You can also clean out your Tupperware/food storage – anything without a matching top goes.
16. Clean out your junk drawer – throw out old batteries, nearly burned candles, broken pens, old receipts, etc.
17. Buy a trash can with 2 containers for recycling vs. trash, or get organized with your existing trash cans so recycling isn’t even a second thought.
18. Buy reusable produce bags and bring them to the grocery store to buy produce. Your produce will last longer, too!
19. Donate any countertop appliances you don’t use regularly. (I’m looking at you, juicer, from the circa 2014 juice cleanse craze.)
20. Review your plates, bowls, and dishes – donate the plates/bowls that are chipped, broken, or you don’t love. Focus on having just enough plates for your family, rather than multiple sets of dishes you have just in case or just because.
21. Look back at your spice rack you did on day 1 – any spices that you haven’t used in the past 21 days, goes.