Kitchen Clutter

Organizing the kitchen can be a quick way to reduce household clutter.  Taking a weekend afternoon, my wife and I literally took most everything out of the kitchen to evaluate for keeping except the food, appliances on counter tops, the junk drawer (it is a small mess). We had success pair things down by a couple of guiding principles.  We also took breaks during the process.  Generally we thought that if an item was not useful or very sentimental or used in the past ~3 years then it is a good candidate for selling, giving away or discarding.  Even a few glass bowls are getting the boot out of the kitchen even though valuable we just don't use the items.   Yes it was hard at times, but we did the following:

The three boxes of stuff in the middle are leaving
the kitchen. (Not pictured is over the top cabinet storage).

Phase One
- Start with an end in mind - how much stuff do you really want to get rid of for creating fresh open space? What is the purpose of the room your in? The kitchen is where we cook, eat, and congregate while entertaining...
- Group likes with likes - for example, put utensils with other utensils for sorting.

Phase Two
- Create processing piles of stuff outside of the room - develop a keep, sell, giveaway, process later, fix pile (items that need to be fixed or worked on otherwise could also be candidates for discard or removal). Bring back only what your going to keep or fix (and the fix items should be addressed soon).

Phase Three
- Bring back only the stuff into the kitchen that your going to keep. Otherwise store if possible in another area the stuff that is going to be given away, sold or ultimately discarded (so it does not wander back in).
- Monitor you goals. If your still a bit away from your goals. repeat phases one and two.

Outcomes
You'll discover things you had not thought about in a while and might use again or rediscover things you never really needed it in the first place.  How does this relate to getting all my keepsakes and important papers down to 8gigs and 2 boxes?  Well, from the kitchen I found a keepsake cookbook from middle school not in copyright that I want to share again with old friends.  Having an organized kitchen brings peace of mind too.