{"id":3169,"date":"2014-04-13T11:00:27","date_gmt":"2014-04-13T15:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/?p=3169"},"modified":"2014-07-17T15:58:18","modified_gmt":"2014-07-17T19:58:18","slug":"a-drawer-a-day-wk-6-kitchen-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/a-drawer-a-day-wk-6-kitchen-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A Drawer A Day: Wk 6-Kitchen+"},"content":{"rendered":"

NOTE: This week’s blog is longer than usual. Skip to the end, LESSONS LEARNED, if you just want the bottom line – though this means you may miss my humor too. \ud83d\ude42<\/em><\/p>\n

Lent is a penitential season so I have a confession to make. I haven\u2019t been cleaning out A-Drawer-A-Day. In the interest of saving time, I\u2019ve usually waited till the weekend and then did 7 days at once. It simplified my life. But, in the interest of authenticity I decided I should at least try A-Drawer-A-Day to see if it really was that much more inconvenient or if it really felt easier.<\/span>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

DAY 1:<\/b> Since I hadn\u2019t finished all the cabinets in the kitchen last week, I chose a pretty big cabinet. It may have actually equaled 3 or so drawers but I thought, \u201cHeck, I\u2019m only doing one today, I can handle this.\u201d Besides, I suspected I wouldn\u2019t have much to give away, and it would at least get cleaned. I was right that there wasn\u2019t much to give away and the cabinet did get cleaner (I remembered to use rags today instead of paper towels like last week.) The only thing I found to remove were plastic food storage containers. But here was the problem. Some of the lids didn\u2019t fit. Some of the bottoms didn\u2019t have lids. And some of the lids didn\u2019t have bottoms.
\n\"Days<\/a>Keep<\/span>: \u00a032 containers
\nGive Away<\/span>: 1 container with matching lid that was an odd size
\nRecycle<\/span>: 11 mismatched lids and bottoms that had a triangle on them
\nThrow Away<\/span>: 24 mismatched or duplicate lids and bottoms that didn\u2019t have a triangle
\nTime<\/span>: 2 hours. Fortunately\/unfortunately in the process of sorting and reorganizing I noticed that the shelf was uneven and decided to put a new brace under it. These projects always seem to escalate.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Days<\/a>DAY 2:<\/b> After my satisfying but time consuming experience on Day 1, I decided that I would need to redefine how many cabinet sections equaled one drawer. I decided to count each cabinet door as one drawer. (According to this definition I have 16 remaining \u201cdrawers\u201d in the kitchen although many of them probably won\u2019t have anything to remove.
\nGive Away<\/span>: 5 measuring cups that had been hidden behind food boxes.
\nTime<\/span>: 10 minutes. (Now that\u2019s a lot more reasonable.)<\/p>\n

DAY 3:<\/b>\u00a0(staples like oils, vinegars, measuring cups\u2026)
\nGive Away<\/span>: 0, but I have 3 much cleaner shelves \ud83d\ude42
\nTime<\/span>: 15 minutes. According to my original rule of finding at least one thing a day, I should have gone on to the next door but I thought that 15 minutes was a reasonable amount of time to spend each day, so I decided to stop. (She who maketh the rule can changeth the rule.) If I make this too time consuming, it will sabotage my motivation.<\/p>\n

\"Days<\/a><\/b>DAY 4:<\/b>\u00a0(odds & ends)
\nGive Away<\/span>: 1 Kitchen Slicer (with 4 blades)
\nRecycle<\/span>: 1 very<\/i> old bottle of raspberry syrup (I love all things raspberry but this bottle was almost empty and even I<\/i> had to admit that the syrup looked a lot thicker than when I remember last using it about 5 years ago.
\nTime<\/span>: 10 minutes
\n+ 5 minutes trying to see if I could readjust the cabinet door to close more tightly
\n+ 5 minutes trying to soften the raspberry syrup so I could empty the bottle to recycle it
\n+ 5 minutes consulting with Jim about whether we would ever use the Kitchen Slicer enough to warrant keeping it.<\/p>\n

DAY 5<\/b>:
\n<\/span>Door #1: <\/b>Blender
\nGive Away<\/span>: 0 \u2013 I\u2019m keeping the blender.
\nTime<\/span>: 4 minutes to clean. Since I didn\u2019t remove anything and it was quick, I moved on.<\/p>\n

\"Days<\/a>Door #2<\/b>: (3 shelves containing spices, teas, coffees etc.)
\nGive Away<\/span>:<\/b> 0 \u2013 Still nothing worth giving away but definitely some things to recycle or throw away
\nCombined<\/span>: chili powder, pickling spices, Old Bay seafood seasoning
\nRecycled or Threw Away<\/span>:
\n– Large Fiber bottle (exp. date 2011)
\n– Mexican chocolate bar for cooking (out of 2)
\n– 5 Lipton tea bags. We prefer herbal teas.
\n– Very old green and red sprinkles (I don\u2019t do Xmas cookies.)
\n– Unidentified powder in a plastic bag.
\nWait<\/span>:
\n– MSG
\n<\/span>– Alum powder
\nTime<\/span>: 40 minutes (about 13 minutes a shelf) Perhaps I should have considered a shelf to be a drawer, but a rule is a rule and I\u2019m sticking to it, even if I did make it myself. There\u2019s nothing like consistency. \ud83d\ude42
\n+ 5 minutes to check the use of MSG and Alum and how harmful either might be
\n+ 5 minutes to consult with Jim about what he wanted to keep
\n+ 5 minutes preparing the stuff that was to be recycled
\nHmmm. All told, this took longer than I expected.<\/p>\n

\"Days<\/a>DAY 6<\/b>: (Alcohol)
\n<\/span>Door #1: <\/b>0 (Kept some alcohol basics, an ice crusher, and a flask)
\nTime<\/span>: 3 minutes<\/p>\n

Door #2<\/b>:
\nThrow Aways<\/span>:
\n– 1 bottle of vermouth we bought about 20 years ago to make martinis when my parents visited. Since it was opened and old, I suppose I\u2019ll just throw it away.
\n– 1 tiny bottle of Mirabelle de Lorraine
\nTime<\/span>: 4 minutes
\n<\/span>+2 minutes on the internet to find out what Mirabelle de Lorraine is (a plum brandy from France)
\n+12 minutes to clean the dust off the top of the refrigerator which sits below these two liquor cabinets\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

DAY 7
\n<\/b>Door #1:<\/b> 0 – Kept all the cereals that we regularly eat
\nTime<\/span>: 1 minute<\/p>\n

Door #2:<\/b> 0 – Kept our daily medicines and a microwave lid
\nTime<\/span>: 2 minutes<\/p>\n

\"Days<\/a>Door #3<\/b>: glasses and mismatched mugs
\nGive Away<\/span>: 1 mug \u00a0This might seem to be a rather paltry give away but the advantage of mismatched mugs is that we can give them to company and each person has their unique mug. However, 2 mugs matched so I\u2019m giving away one so no one will get confused and share germs.
\nTime:<\/span> 10 minutes<\/p>\n

PAUSE<\/em> – OK, so I accomplished one give away today and should stop, BUT, there\u2019s only one door left in this area and I know it is pretty clean and contains stuff we use every day so it should be easy.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Click<\/a>

Click to enlarge & see how decrepit these are.<\/p><\/div>\n

Door #4:<\/b>\u00a0(pots, pans, and mixing bowls)
\nGive Away\/Throw Away?<\/span>
\n– 2 old, somewhat corroded, bread pans. We still have 6 good ones.
\n<\/span>– 10 mini bread pans. Some would call these disposable, but I know we used them more than once.
\nTime<\/span>: 5 minutes<\/p>\n

LESSONS LEARNED:<\/strong>
\n<\/span>1. Don\u2019t give advice without testing it.
\n<\/b>A-Drawer-A-Day sounded like an easy starting point for beginning simplifiers. I still think that holds, but it can be complicated by what you consider a drawer. When my kitchen drawers were finished I started on my cabinets. In hindsight, if my aim was to do this in small bites, I would have counted each kitchen door <\/span>shelf<\/i> as a drawer. Calculating this way (and not counting side repair projects) I averaged 7 minutes per \u201cdrawer.\u201d That would be pretty doable for most people.<\/span><\/p>\n

2. It\u2019s hard to stop.
\n<\/b>Once I got into cleaning a drawer, I found other peripheral projects like cleaning the tops of the cabinet doors or repairing shelves. This can be a pro or a con. The momentum of starting a cabinet motivated me to fix related things in my way. If time is limited, however, it can discourage continuing the next day lest it escalate into a bigger than anticipated project.<\/span><\/p>\n

3. Don\u2019t be a slave.
\n<\/b>I started out with a plan to find at least one thing a day to give away (or at least throw away). As circumstances changed, I needed to not be a slave \u2013 even to my own rules. Do what works for you.<\/span><\/p>\n

4. It’s worth it?
\n<\/b>Even when I didn\u2019t give anything away, it was worth it to:
\n– Find lost things
\n– Get the drawers cleaner
\n– Combine and get rid of duplicates”
\n– Be able to find things more quickly in uncluttered drawers<\/p>\n

Question:<\/strong> I\u2019m wondering what kitchen supplies other people would choose to keep or pitch?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NOTE: This week’s blog is longer than usual. Skip to the end, LESSONS LEARNED, if you just want the bottom line – though this means you may miss my humor too. \ud83d\ude42 Lent is a penitential season so I have a confession to make. I haven\u2019t been cleaning out A-Drawer-A-Day. In the interest of saving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[26,22,18,17,6],"class_list":["post-3169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-drawer-a-day","tag-food","tag-household","tag-kitchen","tag-musings","tag-recycling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3169"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3341,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3169\/revisions\/3341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}