Is your kitchen being taken over by small kitchen appliances? Here’s the thing…small appliances aren’t necessarily small. Often they’re big (think about the size of a KitchenAid), which might not be an issue if you’ve got a huge kitchen with loads of space, but if you haven’t well, you get the picture. Some might not even be all that big but when you’ve got quite a few of them they take up a lot of space.
How many of these have you got: food mixer, hand mixer, coffee maker, juicer, blender, high-speed blender, food processor, waffle maker, toaster, toastie maker, rice cooker, slow cooker, pressure cooker, kettle, ice cream maker, smoothie maker, soup maker, bread maker, dehydrator, fryer, steamer, sous-vide, knife sharpener.. Do you have any others?
So why is it a problem?
Who doesn’t love a kitchen gadget but those appliances can take up far too much space on your worktops and everything ends up looking messy and disorganised. We are so seduced by fantastic marketing. How about ‘innovative cutting edge technology’? Or ‘the must have juicer of 2019’. Or ‘producing the most nutritious…’? It persuades you to buy it even though you don’t really need it, but you know what it’s like…it’ll save you time, it’ll make cooking so much easier, it’ll be done so much quicker, it’ll make you and your family healthier, it’s the next best thing since sliced bread. And before you know it, you want it, you buy it, but you haven’t thought if you really need it and do you have space in your kitchen. And you end up with too many things in too small a space. You might even end up with more than one of a similar item as you’ve upgraded but not got rid of your old one.
Or you might have received an appliance as a present. You don’t need it, you might not like it, you don’t use it, but what if the person who gave it to you came around to visit and you didn’t have the appliance? So you keep it.
Isn’t it time to solve your kitchen worktop clutter by decluttering your kitchen appliances then get more organised with the ones you keep?
Time to declutter
1. Now's the time to make space and take control of your worktops. And it starts with clearing your clutter. First thing is to get together all your appliances and put them into groups: ones you use daily or a few times a week; ones you don’t use that much, ones that you never use. Declutter the nevers, even if they cost you a lot of money and even if someone gave them to you. You can give them away to someone you know who’d really like them and use them, or on a site like Freecycle, or a buy and sell Facebook group for your local area. If you have any that are new or nearly new you could try selling them.
2. If something is broken or has a piece missing, how long has it been like that? How likely is it that you’re going to get it repaired or the missing thing replaced? It’s time to let go. If they’ve stopped working or in not-so-great condition, find out where you can recycle them in your area.
3. That present you’ve never used… is it worth cluttering up your space with something you don’t like and/or never used? Is it likely that the giver will even notice you’ve decluttered it? Do you think they’re keeping tabs on you. Time to let go.
4. Declutter where you have multiples of the same or similar appliance. How many juicers, toasters, mixers or anything else, do you really need?
Reorganise the rest
5. Keep the ones you use on a daily basis or several times a week, if you’ve got the space, out on the worktops.
6. Not enough space? Check what else is on your worktops and ask yourself if they absolutely have to be there or could they go away perhaps in a cupboard nearby. For example, store tea/coffee/sugar canisters in a cupboard near to your kettle; your cooking utensils in a drawer near your cooker, fruit bowl in another room or on the kitchen/dining table. How about finding a designated space for things that habitually get dumped on the kitchen worktops that don’t need to be there. For example, mail that comes in to the home and receipts.
7. The ones you use but not so regularly store in a cupboard or a drawer. Make sure the drawer is strong enough to hold the weight. If it’s a seasonal appliance like an ice cream maker, place higher up which leaves space lower down for things you use more often. And if next summer you don’t use it, you know it’s time to declutter
8. If you haven’t got the space on your worktops or in your cupboards and drawers it’s time to declutter those spaces too.
9. If you store away in cupboards and drawers, how easy is it to get the appliance out to use it. If it’s difficult you know it’ll become one of your nevers. Declutter it now, and gain the space back in your cupboards.
10. Some people store stuff on top of cabinets. Here are some reasons not to do this: they are visual clutter, they are dust collectors, they make the space look top heavy and have an effect of bearing down on you, it makes it difficult to use them so you don’t use them and they become clutter.
11. If you haven’t got enough space in the kitchen but you absolutely want to keep appliances that you do occasionally use, have you got space anywhere else? For example, the dining room.
Let us know
Do you have kitchen appliance clutter? Have you found something that works in keeping them organised? Leave a comment, I’d love to hear what you think.
Doreen 😀
Get in touch for help to declutter your home:
ClutterClearingUK.com
doreen@clutterclearinguk.co.uk
Trained with Karen Kingston, author of Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui
Member of APDO (Association of Professional Declutterers and Organisers)