Tidy Mom Camp - Day 4 Let's talk Kitchen Optimization!!

Hi there. It's day four. We are knocking out this week getting this challenge done. But definitely we cannot have a tidy mom camp without talking about the kitchen. You know, this camp is all about taking the overwhelm out of our everyday lives. And I know that the kitchen can definitely be a source of overwhelm. So let's talk about how to deal with the clutter, how to optimize, and even I'll give you some tips on how to organize on a budget. So let's start with the clutter. I want to get that out right away. So I wasn't born an organized person. I had to learn over time how to achieve, you know, organization, a level of organization that worked for me. Right? And we all have a different level of organization and definition of organization. Personally, I like clear counters, clear tables, and I work at it. I prioritize that because it's important to me. Things will stack up and I have to work on getting them out of the way. But the key thing for you to do, what I encourage you to do, is go and stand in your kitchen, look around, look at your kitchen table, look at what's there, take inventory, take note of what you see, what type of things are on your counters. Is it mail? If it's mail, then make sure you go back and look at where should mail go when it comes in the house. Can you get like a little vertical, you know, little holder for you to put your mail in so that on set, on the weekends, if you go through your mail on the weekends, that you can grab that, go sit down and go through all of your mail and process it and grab any to do's and put that in your to do folder, right? And if you have things that are sitting on your counter, it's either because they don't have a home or people aren't putting them in their home. And you need to address both things. So go one by one and look at all the things that are on your calendars, and you might need to play catch up. Maybe you have a ton of mail, maybe you've got four months of mail. You're going to have to prioritize going through it, and you will amaze yourself. Once you start, you'll knock through it pretty quickly, right? You can reduce it down to a super small pile of things that you have to do. The rest of it's probably junk or duplicates or anything like that. So go through and really look at it and analyze what is sitting there so that you can then address it again if it doesn't have a home. You need to find a home for it so that the, in the future those things don't end up on the counter. If it's an issue where things have a home, but people aren't putting it in the home, that's a different topic. And you need to really work with them to understand what, why you want to have clear counters, why it's important for you that the, the, the kitchen counters are clear or the kitchen table is clear. That way they can understand it. And then hopefully you can get them to start putting things away where they belong and just taking that extra 5, 10 seconds to walk over and put it on a hook or in a bin, or take it to their room or take it to the garage, wherever the places that you've designated that thing should be stored. So I, there isn't a clear cut answer on how to address this other than I urge you to take inventory and really look at what it is. And one by one, just take one category at a time, maybe one category per week, and try to address it so that going forward that doesn't become an issue for you. Now, if you've gotten rid of all the things that don't belong in the kitchen and you still feel that things are pretty confined and cluttered in your kitchen with kitchen stuff, then we really need to look at that. You need to really ask yourself the hard questions. You know, do you have duplicate? Do you have triplicates? Do you have things that you really could pare down? Could you donate to friends or family or an organization? Do you have things that are broken you can get rid of? Right. Don't keep things because they're broken. Get rid of them. Ask yourself, would I buy this today? Because there's a lot of things that we buy we really don't use. I have this little gadget, you may have seen it, where it's like a pair of scissors for herbs. And you can cut like, you know, onion, like green onions or maybe cilantro or something like that. You can cut it and it puts it in little pieces. It didn't work that great. And I never used it. The other day I took it and put it in a donation bin, right? Because I don't need it sitting here cluttering up my valuable space in my kitchen that I want to use to store the things that I need, I want and I use on a regular basis. So ask yourself if you really need something and get rid of things that you just don't need. The other thing is, and I Know that some of you love your knickknacks, but I really encourage you to take out some of the decorations you might have in your kitchen. It can really make a difference in how bold and busy your kitchen looks. I've got some pictures up on the wall. I have some. I have like a dish above my stove, but that's pretty much it. The rest of the things are just more like, you know, fruit bowls and things like that that I like to display my fruit. And I find by keeping the knickknacks and all the decorations to a minimum, it helps keep my. My kitchen be more streamlined and less cluttered. We've already talked about this before, but make sure you have a centralized place outside of the kitchen, or at least a designated place in the kitchen. Bills or you put papers, make sure. I mean, I always recommend trying to keep paperwork and things like that out of the kitchen, but if you have to, and you have like a little desk or something there, make sure you're very clear on where the papers go and you don't let them be laid out on any flat surfaces. The other thing is, how many, you know, mugs do you really need? I took out all of my mugs the other day and I was flabbergasted on how many I have. And there's only a couple of us that actually use them. And how many can we use at once? One. So I know that sometimes we get them as gifts or we get them as souvenirs. But I encourage you to go through and look at if you can pare down the amount of cups, the amount of mugs you have, the amount of water bottles. Oh, my goodness, the water bottles just seem to multiply. Right. And I'm sure you see that at your house. So try to put limits on how many you have. Maybe let's just be crazy and say two per person. Maybe you need two per. Two mugs per person, and you need two water bottles per person. Right. Or maybe you want enough mugs so having guests over that eight people can have coffee. Whatever it is, set that limit. I bet you you have more than that limit. So it's really good to really think about practic. Practically, how many are you ever going to use at once? Take a peek at how many small appliances you have. You probably have. You may have a couple blenders. You may have one that maybe doesn't work, or it's a specialty. Could you maybe pare down to one that could act. You could use. For most uses of a blender, are there different Things like, do you have different mixers and you have too many. Do you have, you know, do you have couple instant pots, couple crock pots? Do you really need those? If you need them, great, keep them. But if you don't, they're taking up valuable space in your kitchen that you could actually use and free up for something else. Also, take a peek at how many kitchen towels you have. I actually have too many kitchen towels. I keep them in a drawer. I've shown them in some of my Instagram posts in the past. You may have seen. But at some point, if I need somewhere to store something, I'm going to go right to those towels. I'm going to say, we don't need 20 towels, right? We only need maybe we need 10. Let's pretend I need 10. I could get rid of half of them and maybe I can store my extra napkins there or some tablecloths in that drawer. So definitely challenge the number of things. And that applies to not only like your. Your dishes and your appliances, but your hot pads, your napkins, your towels, your tablecloths, all of those things. The space matters. So go through and really ask yourself the hard questions. How many of these things do I need? If you're keeping anything that has to do with takeout, I urge you to get rid of it. You don't need all those extra chopsticks, you don't need all those extra sauce packets, and you don't need all the menus. Get rid of them. The menus you can access online for the most part. Double check first if you don't believe me, but you probably don't need it. And as soon as those menus are printed, they're out of date. So see if you can just utilize an online menu, maybe keep. Maybe have like an actual stick set of chopsticks that aren't wooden or plastic, so you don't have to keep the takeout ones and the sauce packets. Oh, my goodness, so many people love to keep sauce packets and they don't use them. I see that so often. So what I. If you really want to keep the sauce packets, because they're that good, what I encourage you to do is get a small clear container and say, okay, I'm going to keep this many of this takeout barbecue sauce or soy sauce or whatever it is in this little bin. And then once it's full, you either go through it and toss things out or you don't put anything else in and everything goes to the garbage that comes home. So I urge you to really Take a look at all the stuff you have that has to do with takeout. Okay. The last thing I'll just talk about when it comes to maybe clutter is if you have somebody who in your house, like, say, you want to have your. Your. Your counters clean, and somebody else likes to have everything out because it helps them. It helps remind them that they need to take their supplements or that they want to use a certain thing, you know, whatever it is. What I do is I urge you to talk to them about how important it is that you want to have your. Your counter's clear. If you want to compromise, I would encourage you to compromise to get a tray or a basket to hold their things. And if they can agree that all of their things are in that basket, I urge you to maybe consider that. And that way you just have that one basket. Everything else should be clear. That's a good way to kind of come to a compromise with someone who wants things out. But you give them boundaries, and they make sure that they keep their things just inside that bin. It works really well. The other thing, I'll tell you a quick story. So my husband has a bunch of things he likes to put in smoothies. And, you know, he liked to have them out, but I didn't want to have them on the counter. So I asked him, if I got you a really large lazy Susan that you can easily turn to access everything, would you be okay with that? And he said, no problem. He was. He was happy to comply with that. He understood my need to have the counters clear, and he's been using that for, I don't even know, maybe almost two years now, maybe a little less than two years. And it's worked out great for him. So I just talk to people and try to find a compromise. And if you need suggestions, reach out to me. I'm happy to help. When it comes to backstock, I don't know if you're familiar with the term of backstock, but if you go to Costco and you buy ketchup, you end up with three things of ketchup. Maybe what you can do in your pantry to help free up space is keep the one ketchup there and the other two in another area that's maybe not as front and center. And in your main pantry, it's in a back area of another pantry. So you could keep the others in back stock so that when you. You use up the one that's in your main pantry, you just go to your backstop, grab another one, and move it over that help clear up space in your pantry. And I really love doing that. It really helps with keeping the clutter down and making sure we can easily find what we want access to. I don't need access to three things of ketchup, right. Or three things of soy sauce or three things of vanilla, almond milk, or whatever it is. You can keep things. Keep one thing in your main space, whether it's your refrigerator or your pantry, and keep the others in an area you deem as backstock. And it works really well. You can use big, clear bins. You can use boxes for this. You can use baskets, anything you want, want. But I love the concept of using a backstock. You just got to make sure you revisit the backstock and you don't forget about it. When it comes to kitchen organization, there's so many great products, and you don't have to spend a lot of money. So some of the things that I. I recommend is definitely decant your food. It helps take all the clutter, the extra bags and boxes that things come in. If you decant things, you will be so thankful. And I love it. I love to be able to see everything. It's easy for everyone to find, and it's easy to see where you're at if you're getting low on things or if you need to buy something. You don't end up buying duplicates because you can't find something in the. In the pantry, and you end up buying another one while you're at the store because you just don't know when it's visible and you can see the things decanted. It's in your mind. You're like, oh, we are running low on rice or pasta or cereal or whatever you have. So decanting is a great way of removing clutter and keeping things organized in your kitchen. The other thing is to consider hanging things up. Like, you can put a metal strip on, like maybe above your stove or near your stove, or some of your knives and some of your utensils. It helps get things off the counter and makes them easily accessible and visible. And if you have a nice set, sometimes they're pretty to look at. I also like these cup holders. These are. These are actually cup holders or mug holders. And I use them for my measuring cups and my measuring spoons, and it helps get them up and make. Helps me use more of the vertical space in my cabinets. So definitely look at how you can maximize using your vertical space. If everything's just sitting on the bott, then you can't you can't. Everything gets kind of cluttered, and you're kind of trying to fumble and find things this way. It's kind of nice and tidy, and I'm using everything, and it's actually kind of displayed and it looks nice. Again, use lazy Susan so you can get easy access to back sides of your. Of your cabinet so you're not knocking things over trying to find things. I already briefly showed you my spice rack, but this is an example of how you can organize things, whether it's cans or other things that you store in your kitchen. I love these risers because it helps you, again, make use of vertical space. If everything's flat, it's hard to see back and be able to see all the things that you're storing. So this works great. And again, I love the decanting, right? So I took everything, all of my spices out of the. The normal jars, and I can easily see how much I have of each one. And I have labels that I can put on the bottom to write when they expire. So you don't have to do that. So you don't have to. To worry about losing that information. I have dissolvable labels, and they work. AM can do that on all of your spices, too, if you do decant them. But, you know, it looks nice, but it's super functional, and it doesn't cost a lot to do this type of project. So we are a fairly large family. We don't have a giant kitchen. It definitely suits our needs. But to maximize space, I love to use different things, like these shelves. Whether it's acrylic wood, anything that you want to use, it works nice because instead of, like, trying to stack everything on top, it's hard to get to when you're trying to make dinner. It's easy. You want the big plates. They're easy to get to without having to move the small plate sitting on top of it. You just want a small plate, you grab it from here. Utilizing these type of solutions will really help you optimize the space in your kitchen and help you stay organized when it comes to getting ready to eat. Once the meal is prepared, we have the silverware that's nice and handy right next to where the kitchen table is. We have easy access to the toddler plates and things. We have easy access to the bibs. Right. Why store the bibs somewhere outside of the kitch in. Why not store them right where the plates are and right next to the table so you can easily grab one and be able to be on your way and get your little one eating. Now, when it comes to actually prepping food and chopping vegetables or anything we want to do, we actually have a drawer that's dedicated for all things cutting where we have our knife block. It's not sitting on the counter, it's actually sitting here. And I love this knife block. Anything that has to do with cutting, even cutting an apple, is in this drawer. So if anybody wants to do something that has to do with that type of prep, they know exactly where to find it. And it's right next to where we do all that food prep. Additionally, we have another drawer next to it where we have things like, you know, our garlic press and any other tools that we use when it comes to creating and prepping the the ingredients that we're going to use on the stove or in the oven. Okay, I won't go into detail today because it's too much for this one video, but optimize your pantry and your refrigerator so that you have easy access to what you want and you also can easily see what you need and what you you need to buy. So I have a couple videos and I go in depth. I have several videos on how to organize a kitchen, several videos on how to organize a pantry. I'll link them all, they're all good and they'll give you ideas on how you can set things up for yourself. And again, don't worry so much about what product you buy. Just make sure it's functional and it'll help you with your day to day uses of the kitchen and help take overwhelm out of your kitchen and meal prep. So I hope this helped. Please let me know if you need any help or you brainstorm. Brainstorm ideas on how to maybe get rid of some particular clutter that you're struggling with or if you need help with some kitchen organization suggestions. I love talking organization products and ways to make things a little bit easier and more streamlined. So definitely reach out in the Facebook post and I hope to see you on the Facebook live. See you soon. Bye.