5 Kitchen Clean-Ups for 2015

Happy New Year!

I love spending some time as the year changes cleaning up a few things in the kitchen (and other rooms) that have been staring back at me for a while.

And as I do so, I shake my head with the realization that each of the tasks that has been nagging me for up to months on end takes, like, 90 seconds to complete.

Here are 5 Kitchen Clean-Ups that I checked off my list this week:

Spice-Top Labels. My primary spice and herb storage is in a large, low-sided bin. It holds 28 jars that, until this week, had no labels on the top unless the bottle came pre-labeled. I spent a lot of (relative) time pulling each jar out to check the labels every time I went to reach for the cumin, or rosemary, or oregano. I will be darned, but I could never find the oregano, despite it being in the top three by usage. {Note: This statistic is made up. I actually have not monitored my herb usage, but I do think oregano would be up there if I were to do so.} So I spent a few minutes labeling the tops, using some stickers that were left over from last year’s planner. There is a (very) vague color-coded system: yellow (most often used), blue (baking spices), red (spicy or stronger flavors), and purple (less-used). It has worked well with the few things I have made so far this year!
Culling the Utensil Crock. I looked at my utensil crock, and my back-up bin of kitchen utensils, and sighed. It was so organized when I moved in to this apartment early in 2014, but, like so many things in life, deteriorated without periodic maintenance. I dumped all the utensils on my kitchen table…
… and sighed.
I had gone through my utensils before I moved last year, so I only found two or three this week that I didn’t want to keep around any more. I do actually recall using the rest of them in the past year, so back in they went. I straightened some by size – I have a small bin for the tiny tools; and there are some small-to-medium tools that I use a lot like a vegetable peeler and can opener, and those needed an easy-access bin as well. True to the title of this blog, my most-used gadgets went in the utensil crock (along with a few odd-shapers), and the rest went back in the supplementary bin with some (small) semblance of order.
Something New: a Shiny Food Processor! It was time. I loved my food processor, but it was starting to show some signs of aging, and I definitely use it enough that an investment was worth it. I thought the new year would be a good time for a new beginning, and I opted for the Cuisinart Elite Die-Case 12-Cup Food Processor, and I look forward to sharing the fruits of its labor with you. Visually, sorry. Unless we are friends and you live near me.
Clean Drinking Glasses. I have one behavior that horrifies my mother (well, one that I know about). I usually don’t wash anything before I put it in the dish washer. This isn’t so much of a problem if I start the dish washer immediately, but if food or liquid dries before it’s washed off, of course, it is harder to have gleaming glasses. I use them to store herbs in the refrigerator (with a few inches of water at the bottom), and there was also a recent brunch with orange juice that may have contributed, and my drinking glasses, over time, had dulled. So I took out all of my glasses, and let them soak with soapy dish soap and hot water while I took care of my other tasks, and then scrubbed them all well using a strong scrubber rather than a regular sponge. Good as new!
Fridge Corners. I don’t know who designed my refrigerator, but it’s not the best for storing food. {It doesn’t impress me on the noise front either – it makes the weirdest noises that my building’s maintenance assure me are normal.} Food just gets hidden in corners until a vague odor reminds me that it’s time to pull the garbage can over to the fridge and have no mercy. I also went through the jars in the door and tossed a few older condiments as well. Clean, fresh, and good as new.