Ten Compelling Reasons to Declutter your Kitchen in 2020

The kitchen is one of the most likely rooms in your house to accumulate clutter.

Content from emptied pockets, empty packaging, waste from groceries and food remains adds to the daily collection of cooking supplies and old coffee mugs and old storage containers.

You need action and resolve to help in keeping your kitchen free from clutter. There is definitely something completely revitalizing about an uncluttered, clean kitchen. It will brighten the day and its inviting.

You are most likely a busy person, like most people nowadays. Decluttering may therefore not feel like a priority in your life and may rank low in your list of to do items.

However, decluttering your kitchen will prove worth any time allocated to it as it has numerous benefits; top of those is restoring order and beauty to your kitchen and house and giving you a feeling of freedom.

Why should you declutter your kitchen?

Here are some reasons why you should declutter your kitchen:

1. Simpler to clean

It is hard to clean a cluttered refrigerator and countertops that are overflowing with containers and food. Wiping down surfaces in an organized and spacious kitchen is much easier.

2. Cooking is enjoyable

In many homes, a kitchen helps serve several collateral purposes like the perfect spot for art projects, a quiet area for homework, or a get-together area for chatting.

However, the main purpose for the kitchen is cooking snacks, food and engaging in activities geared towards providing nutrition for our bodies.

A decluttered kitchen, with space to facilitate movements while chopping, cooking and baking and also cleaning dishes is always a more fun and safe area for working in than in any cluttered surroundings.

One of the biggest advantages of decluttering your kitchen is that you will find more pleasure in preparing meals. A clean and organized kitchen is inviting and will encourage you to use it more.

An organized kitchen will encourage you to cook more regularly at home as opposed to purchasing ready meals.

Home cooking is inexpensive and likely to include more nutritious foods compared to those you would purchase. So, not only will you consume meals that are nourishing, but you will also make savings.

3. Time saver

Do you remember the number of times you began cooking and then had to stop as you could not find an ingredient or a utensil?

Just consider how much time you waste every time you stop to look for something you require. This is annoying, to say the least, and you can easily prevent it if you declutter the kitchen.

With a decluttered kitchen, it is easy to come up with zones for preparing, cooking, cleaning and storage within your kitchen.

This will ensure everything you require for a certain chore is close by and easy to locate. This can certainly help you in saving time and avoiding the frustrations of looking for misplaced items in your kitchen.

4. Helps set culture for the whole household

Your kitchen serves as the control center in your house. Because of that, the kitchen sets the culture and tone in your home.

An uncluttered kitchen will promote cleanliness, promote possibility and opportunity, communicate order and tranquility and save time. It will also serve as an example to the entire household. The reverse is also true.

5. Clutter will attract clutter

When a kitchen is a collection place for “things,” more and more things start making their way to it. Closets, basements, junk drawers full of clutter attract even more clutter.

Countertops and kitchen drawers and cupboards and the extra storage space in the pantry regularly serve a similar purpose.

When you let your storage spaces get cluttered with things that do not belong there, it becomes easy to accumulate more things because you keep postponing the process of sorting out the mess.

There is no shortcut. You can only prevent the building of more clutter by getting rid of these things as much as you can and as soon as you can.

6. Make savings

Did you know a well organized clutter free kitchen will help you make savings, which will help you achieve financial freedom?

When the kitchen is clutter free and you know where everything is located, you will not purchase duplicates of things you already have. This is not only about gadgets and utensils, but also food.

It is easy to forget what you have in the freezer or pantry when it is full of items. When this takes place, you find yourself purchasing more and building up stocks of things you already have in your house.

Additionally, you’ll end up disposing of food that you never used and which ended up going bad or expiring as you did not know it was there.

You should organize gadgets, utensils and food so that they are easy to access. To know precisely where everything is and in what quantities, you can create an inventory for both the freezer and pantry.

7. Neater and better aesthetics

Clutter and aesthetics do not go together; they are incompatible. A clutterful room cannot be neat or good looking. Most if not all people like beautiful spaces.

Getting rid of clutter helps you to achieve this objective since it is impossible to keep a room full of clutter in good order.

Clutter also disorganizes your thinking and planning, which makes it impossible to put beauty in the front seat.

8. Keep bugs and rodents away

   

Bugs are rodents are masters at hiding. Bugs like cockroaches thrive in dark hidden spaces and crevices. These creatures rarely roam in the open and often come out at night when it is dark and silent.

An airy, organized and spacious kitchen with minimal appliances, utensils and clutter keeps bugs and rodents away as there is nowhere to hide. The reverse is true. A cluttered kitchen makes for an inviting and safe space for these annoying creatures.

Even as you use pesticides and other pest and rodent control chemicals, decluttering your kitchen is a helpful way to prevent an infestation in the first place.

9. It is the age of minimalism

This is the age where less is more. Books have been written on the subject of minimalism and there are numerous websites, podcasts and YouTube posts and channels dedicated to this way of living.

Minimalism is not only about saving money but also about attaining certain higher emotional and spiritual values like contentment and freedom.

Minimalists find freedom in the fact that they felt better after releasing things which they often held onto for satisfaction, even when they did not need to hold on to that stuff.

Your sense of purpose, safety and contentment should not lie in things but in a higher purpose or higher values like serving humanity, or whichever higher value you live for.

Decluttering your kitchen is one way of practicing minimalism in your life. Decluttering teaches you that less can be more.

10. An opportunity to give

Decluttering your kitchen allows you to comb through all the extra utensils and appliances that you have and decide what you need and what you can get rid of.

You will find it has more benefits that you ever imagined, including allowing you to serve by giving out the things you no longer need to hoard.

If some of the things you wish to part with are still in good working condition, then you may consider gifting them to a friend or charity that would make good use of an item that was previously unutilized. This is a win-win outcome for both the giver and the receiver.

How to start decluttering?

1. Sweep through the entire house

The best way to start decluttering is by performing a fast decluttering sweep through your entire home. Get a laundry basket or box and speedily move around the house searching for anything you see that you do not like or use frequently.

You can get rid of a layer of clutter from everywhere in your home thanks to this quick sweep aimed at decluttering.

Search for the items you no longer like, require or use frequently, decor objects you do not like and which are only filling the space or things which you can categorize as trash but have not gotten rid of.

Check anything that is just adding clutter to your house but not adding value to your life.

Ensure that you are honest with yourself during this process in deciding whether you need to hold on to an item or how frequently you use it.

It is astonishing how easy and fast you will get a lot of things you do not care about, love, notice or even use or need.

Disposing of these easy things to part with items will provide you with the motivation and confidence to continue decluttering.

It will show you that decluttering does not have to be difficult. Simply look at how fast you will fill an entire laundry basket with things you will not even miss.

2. Reconsider what it means to dispose of something

If you have invested greatly on an item, you might be reluctant to dispose it because of the sunk costs. When you sell or donate the excess items, you experience some blessings. Some of those joys of decluttering include:

• You’re freed from all the guilt that goes along with the clutter
• You get the benefit of tidier home
• Your excess blesses someone else

So, you’ll deprive yourself of blessings when you hold on to clutter.

3. Choose a defined space, to begin with

Do not plan to declutter the whole house at one go. This will be a recipe for overwhelm and annoyance, with the likely result of postponing the exercise, even indefinitely.

Rather, choose a drawer, a shelf, even simply a small defined space to begin with. When you have a focused target, it makes it simpler to complete and stay on course. A small focused target is more palatable and achievable.

You can start with your kitchen, but break it down further. For many people, the kitchen is the focal point of most activities in the house.

Many benefits come with decluttering the kitchen:

• There’s no stress when cooking and cleaning
• Have fun spending time in your kitchen with family and friends
• Cleaning up will be easy

While targeting your kitchen as the starting point for this exercise, you still have to narrow your focus further. Begin with the fridge, a cupboard, a countertop or a single drawer.

You can do one small area at a time, from start to end before you go to the next area. By doing this, you break what initially seemed like an overwhelming task into an easy manageable task.

You could choose to start with the area that is in dire need of decluttering and which will give you the greatest satisfaction if done. For instance, if you have extra messy counters, that’s the perfect area to begin.