KonMari Your Kitchen!
While most of the Marie Kondo tips we’ve featured here relate to your clothes closet, office and knick-knacks or hand-me-downs, these tips for organizing your kitchen will help you declutter the most used room in your house! And some say the most popular. Little wonder that all kinds of clutter ends up here – but we have ways of making it disappear!
Declutter Your Kitchen by Category
One of the first steps in applying the KonMari Method to your kitchen is to eliminate “word pollution” – which means all the word-plastered boxes and packaging that contain your dry goods: flour, sugar, rice, grains and snacks. Instead, grab glass jars from the nearest discount store (like the Dollar Tree or the Walmart in Lafayette) and reduce the amount of visual clutter. Pop Sugar shows the transformation – which also makes it easier to find what you need when you’re looking for the ingredients to a recipe!
It’s easier to let go of items that don’t give you joy, or that you just don’t need (like those condiment packets in the junk drawer!) if you lay out all your kitchen possessions in three piles. Divide them into cooking utensils, appliances or eating implements. Watch Mz. Liz Hart’s YouTube tutorial fast-mo through all of her kitchen items (using a laundry basket to cart them to counters, tables and the floor). Hart shows you how to decide which items to give to “a better home.” When you pull everything out of drawers and cupboards, you’ll find tons of things you didn’t know you had!
Get Rid of Expensive and Useless Kitchen Gadgets
We all have a small kitchen appliance that we bought or were gifted that has never been plugged into an electrical outlet. That top-of-the-line juicer. Countertop indoor grills that are too messy to bother with. An old slow cooker that you’ve retired because you have a shiny new one. The coffee maker that hasn’t seen any grounds since forever ago. Marie Kondo says: only keep what you love — and that applies even to appliances. The gifts that were expensive but virtually useless to you, might give someone else more joy!
Maybe a can opener doesn’t exactly give you joy, but you use it every other day. That’s a keeper. And that roaster that you pull out three times a year – still useful and worth the cabinet space. As Marie is fond of saying, to figure out which things are important to you, first discard the items that have lost or never had a purpose.
Remove Visual Clutter in the Kitchen
Once you pare down your possessions in the kitchen, you can remove visual clutter from the countertops. For those of us who keep bread, snacks, or condiments, on the countertop for easy access, designate a cabinet for those items and declutter the space underneath. One of the reasons we love walking through model homes is the lack of clutter and the expansive and appealing tidiness!
With the indispensable access to food blogs and websites, haven’t all those cookbooks outlived their usefulness? Paper is so last century, right? Even vintage recipes handed down from great grandmother can be scanned or snapped for easy access. And oh, look – you don’t need to keep it on the kitchen counter anymore!
The KonMari Fridge
Marie is a fan of vertical organization – even in the refrigerator. For example, she stands carrots and celery upright in jars because they’re easier to see and more likely to be eaten before they go limp! Marie’s overarching advice for the fridge? Keep it 30 percent empty to make space for leftovers and new groceries. This means you’ll need to pick one day every week to declutter your fridge by removing the detritus and anything you haven’t consumed that’s expired!
It’s the heart of your home, the room where we tend to gather with friends and family while preparing everything from drinks to dinner, and even a few of Marie Kondo’s tips can boost your pride and joy in the most important room in your house!
The Coolest Kitchens are in Colliers Hill
The coolest, most enviable kitchens are in the new homes that make up the master-planned community of Colliers Hill. Don’t take our word for it! Tour the model homes built by Colorado’s top builders: Meritage Homes, Richmond American Homes, and Century Communities, and take in the amazing amenities and nearby historic town of Erie. The floor plans include ranch-style or two-story designs — priced from the high $300s.
