Purging in the Cupboards

So my purging has lost a little of its focus.  I did my clothes first.  The "curated" selection has been really great.  But where to go next?  KonMari (from this inspirational book) suggests books.  For some reason, this puts me at a stand still.  I am a reader, but I would have to say that I'm the least enthusiastic reader in my family.  They all go through books quicker than their underwear.  I take FOREVER to get through a book.  I'm a much slower reader than the speed readers of my family and frankly, I have a lot of things to do, or that I would rather be doing.  All this to say:  we have oodles of books in our house, but very few of them are mine.  Oh, wait.  I'm supposed to be talking about the kitchen... ha!

So, because my husband decided to reduce his dish usage, that led me to address the dishes and the kitchen.  First up:  mugs.  We use A LOT of mugs.  We're all avid tea and/or coffee drinkers and it's our habit to carry said mugs all over the house.  And leave them there.  And get out a new one every time we want another cuppa. So we had a family meeting and everyone picked their preferred cups. There were many that everyone agreed we didn't need to keep. We did the same with glasses, and travel mugs. Then I went through and just reduced the number of plates and bowls that are kept in the cupboard. We had numerous sets and can get by with less when we don't have company. The extras are stored in the pantry and can be easily brought out when needed.  

The experiment with fewer dishes has had mixed results.  It was nice for about a week, then we stopped being on top of our dishwashing and we're just always "out" of clean dishes. Sigh. With the recent pantry redo, I went ahead and moved almost all the dishes back into the kitchen cupboards. 

I also went through the kitchen linen drawer and purged out the old ratty ones and refolded  the ones that stayed according to the KonMari folding  method.  Love it here. Makes the drawer so much tidier.  

The only other area that I worked on was the spice  cabinet. It just needed a good cleaning up and reorganizing. I get a little lazy about refilling the empties and my family seems incapable of understanding that they are in alphabetical order. I also added some stacked 2x4s to act as a stair step/riser. It makes the ones in back higher so they're easier to see and reach. It's a basic organizing practice, but one I just hadn't done yet. 

Next up:  Pantry!  I have just a few things left to do.  So figure on it taking all summer...  :)