Many times things come into our homes in innocent ways, but when they quit serving their purpose we feel guilty about not using them, we forget the items are in our home, or we feel guilty about the money we wasted and stubbornly hold on to them to use someday. In my experience ‘Someday’ rarely ever comes!
The 32 Items that I threw out were things I needed to permit myself to get rid of most of them had no recycling or reusing value It was items like half-used condiments my family didn’t like, my favorite shampoo that I bought too much of because it was on sale and two years later it smelled like old chemicals or seven pairs of mismatched gloves that I have been hoping to find for the last two years!
These things made me frustrated every time I saw them. I was upset that I wasted money, I didn’t want to throw out food, and I couldn’t throw out my shampoo even though my husband doesn’t appreciate the scent of old chemicals! I needed to permit myself to get rid of these items.
Feeling frustrated every time you see an item is not good for your mental health or your relationship with your family. It’s much better to learn from your mistakes and let the items go.
Annie Eklöv
The food items we never used up I often bought to try a new recipe. This taught me what my family does NOT like to eat. Owning shampoo that actually went bad taught me not to buy more shampoo than I can use up in a two-year period even if it’s on sale! Keeping the kid’s mismatched gloves for years made me realize that when I actually found a glove and made a match the pair was already too small for all my kids! This taught me that I don’t need to keep the kid’s lost gloves longer than the end of each winter.
If you can identify something you learned from the items you need to discard, it can be easier to let them go because you can be confident that you won’t make the same mistake again at least not intentionally.
Annie Eklöv
Often when it’s hard to start decluttering your home, starting with trivial items like old food can get you started and get the momentum rolling. Often if we just get started on the easy items we get excited about transforming our home, and continue into slightly harder spaces!
Kitchen Items You Can Declutter and Never Miss
- Kitchen Condiments that are expired or are 1/2 used and you can’t tell how old they are
- Expired Spices
- Expired food
- The food you bought to try a new recipe, that you didn’t like
- Throw away food in the fridge or freezer if you no longer know what it is. It could be covered in ice, damaged by freezer burn, or moldy.
- Any food or other items infested with bugs. We had bugs in our pantry this year because we unknowingly put them there in a package of homemade dried food. They bred in the package and then exploded into the pantry! This forced us to throw away half of our pantry foods!
- Water bottles that are missing pieces
- Thermoses that are missing pieces
- Any kitchen gadgets that are missing a piece
- Tupperware without lids of lids w/o tupperware
- Extra coffee mugs that are stained on the inside. If you don’t want your guests to use it because it’s stained get rid of it.
- The coffee mugs you were given as freebies because they are advertisements or plastic mugs that you received at restaurants. These tend to accumulate.
- Kitchen appliances you haven’t used in two years. The exception here is if you usually use them, but extraordinary circumstances like coronavirus prevented you from having your usual gatherings.
- Any party supplies you often replace with disposable paper, plastic, or pressed wood products (for example extra silverware) I do have big parties from time to time, and sometimes I don’t use paper products. I do have enough porcelain plates to accommodate a party, but I borrow big serving bowls, platters, and sometimes even cups and mugs from friends or my workplace.
- Extra Fancy glassware
- Extra plates
- Extra big serving bowls
- Extra platters
- Extra plates you bought solely because you didn’t want your kids to break your nice plates. I had ugly extra plates for years, but my kids never broke any of them I did! Over the last 14 years that we had kids in our home, we broke a total of 4 plates! Considering that most of us have a set of 12 plates this is not a catastrophe. I finally got rid of my ugly extra plates and we eat on plates that I actually like even when we don’t have company.
- Old Candy You may find this in your kid’s bedrooms or stashed behind other food if you are trying to hide this from the rest of the family.
- Excessive fridge magnets with advertisements on them
- Leaky Travel mugs. These drive me nuts! I don’t want to spill coffee on myself in the car, yet I kept leaky mugs for many years! Try as I might, I can’t seem to find any logic in holding onto small, cheap items that no longer work!
- Odd-sized pots and pans that no longer suit your family’s needs. My son eats more now that he is 14. I need to make more of everything than I did when he was 8-years-old. His sisters (11 and 5-years-old) don’t eat much right now, but they may eat a lot in their teens. When my kids leave the nest I may need smaller pots and pans for my everyday cooking needs. right now I no longer need the extremely tiny pans that I used to warm up baby food.
- Cookbooks you never use (Often we use our phone)
- Cookie Sheets in excess. I have four cookie sheets and if we run out when the kids are baking we put the cookies on baking paper and move them over when a cookie sheet comes out of the oven.
- Empty jars for canning. I like to reuse old jars from pasta sauce or pickles when I am canning, but I realized the other day that I have a year’s supply of canning jars in the storage room, and jars keep entering my home every time we go to the grocery store! I decided to keep the jars that I have in storage, and I now get rid of all the jars that enter my home. If I start canning and suddenly need more jars, I can always ask a friend if she has extra. (Make sure your glass jars get recycled)
- Cracked or broken dishes. I am not sure why we keep these things, but we do. I have a cracked plate in the cupboard that my son constantly complains about. He seems to always get the cracked dish at the dinner table. I paused my writing and threw the plate in my recycling bag.
- Excessive extra vases. I have a small collection of porcelain vases on display in our home. I got rid of all the vases that didn’t match my collection, and all the glass vases because they tended to get coated on the inside. Usually, we don’t need more than a couple of vases at a time.
- Plastic straws, Where we live they are trying to replace plastic straws with paper. Paper straws are not fun in drinks because they slowly disintegrate, but I bought straws made of bamboo, which the kids think work well. It’s not that plastic straws are bad it’s that people often leave them in nature.
- Muggs or cups that are faded on the outside, cracked, or in any way flaking or damaged. Old cups can contain lead glazing and may not be healthy to use. This becomes a bigger health risk when the glazing or the cup is cracked or damaged.
- Get rid of unhealthy foods if you’re trying to lose weight!
- Leftover ketchup packets and other condiments from restaurants if you’re like me and never actually use them.
I found some of these items the other day when I was reorganizing the cabinet with all my baking supplies. I was NOT planning on decluttering, but you can get a lot of decluttering done if you are on the lookout for things that need to get tossed while you are doing other chores at home.
Check out, my posts on decluttering your home.
Decluttering kids toys and other monsters in their rooms.
What To Do If Your ADHD child Is A Pack Rat!
Don’t make the same 10 minimizing mistakes I did!
34 Items In Your Closet That You Can Toss and Never Miss
