For the last couple of weeks, I have been participating in the Kitchen Cure – a 6 week process of streamlining, decluttering and organizing the kitchen. Each week, participants are given an assignment to complete towards this goal. We are currently in week 2.
 
I hadn’t originally planned to blog about this process, but after working on the assignment for week 1 (go through the fridge, freezer and pantry and get rid of any old, outdated or unused ingredients) and part of week 2 (declutter & give away kitchen equipment), I changed my mind.
 
Going through this spring cleaning is like a purge. I find myself getting more and more into it as I go along, and becoming really motivated to get that kitchen totally streamlined and organized. And on top of that, I can feel it starting to bleed out – I’m wanting to get into the rest of the house. I can tell I am going to end up doing the whole house. The challenge is to slow down and take the time to do the job right. This week’s assignment is just for the pots, pans and utensils but I’ve had to rein myself in several times to keep from including other projects – dishes, etc. I know that will be coming up, so instead of rushing through everything at once, I am forcing myself to slow down and really do THIS assignment. I hope I can apply that discipline to the whole house, after the Kitchen Cure project is done.
 
Backing up to assignment 1 – I worked on the pantry last Saturday. It took longer than I had anticipated, because I wanted to really get it perfect. I’m a relatively organized person anyway, so my pantry wasn’t terrible, but I did have some expired ingredients that needed to be tossed, and some things that could be consolidated, and I reorganized for more efficiency.
 
Here are some before and after pictures. You can see it’s not really that dramatic of a change, but I managed to get a bunch of things up off the floor, which will give me room for getting some things out of other cabinets, later. The difficulty I have with this assignment is getting rid of things that I don’t use that often – fish sauce, and that sort of thing. I am torn between having a comprehensive pantry and keeping things streamlined.

    

 
What’s your strategy? Do you only buy specialty ingredients as they are needed or keep them on hand? Do you throw out what’s leftover after buying a specialty ingredient, or purposely find other recipes to use it up?
 
Next up – pots, pans & utensils!