If you didn’t know, I actually run two blogs: n00bcakes (duh) and !Blog (pronounced “not-blog”).  n00bcakes will always be nothing but cooking and baking, but !Blog consists of many more of my other hobbies, mostly technology or nerd-related.  In a small deviation, however, I recently started a month-long series with Emily of Spatialdrift (oft times mentioned in this blog regarding food) on minimalism.  Together she and I are doing the 30 Day Minimalism Challenge from Minimalism Is Simple.

You can read about our progress on our respective blogs, so I won’t go into detail about that here.  Instead I wanted to write a whole post on one of this week’s specific challenges: minimalism in the kitchen.

My kitchen is a mess.  This isn’t really surprising if you’ve looked at any of my other posts on minimalism (my entire apartment is kind of a mess), but my kitchen is no different.  I’ve always been distressed at my kitchens’ size in relation to the amount of cooking I do and the amount of kitchen implements I have, but instead of getting rid of things I spent a lot of time looking for extra nooks and crannies in which to shove them.

Before I get too ahead of myself, though, I want to talk about more than kitchen implements.  To my eyes, there’s 2 forms of minimalism in the kitchen: in your utensils and in your actual cooking.  Both of these required me to do an overhaul of my kitchen, small though it may be.

Minimizing Utensils

When I did any reading about minimalism in the kitchen, all the articles and posts talked about owning a few good-quality, multi-functional tools and nothing else, which is an idea I can absolutely get behind.  Unfortunately all of the “bad” items the articles then went on to list were stand mixers, microwaves, ice cream machines, and cake tins, just to name a few.  Now if you’ve read n00bcakes for any period of time, you know that I own all of these items (not to mention a crock pot, dutch oven, and multiple cake stands).  It was going to be tough figuring out what to ditch and what to keep.

In the end I did the same thing I’ve started going with each minimalism challenge I’ve tackled: I took an inventory, then considered which items I felt I used the most and which I wouldn’t mind parting with.

After some consideration, I decided to ditch the microwave, an old coffee maker, and one of my cake stands.  In a perfect world I’d be able to part with more of my bigger items, but as a frequent baker I probably use my mixer an average of once a week, and as a lover of easy food, my crock pot is indispensable.  The dutch oven is a fabulous piece of cookware that I know I simply won’t be getting rid of, and while I don’t use the ice cream maker that often, I derive a lot of pleasure from everything I make using it.  If it makes you happy, don’t jump to getting rid of it right away.

I also spent a lot of time winnowing down my stock of pots, pans, and other kitchen paraphernalia, some of which were old, dusty, and I hadn’t used in over a year.  Here’s the set of pans I decided to keep in the end (plus a set of Pyrex pans, not shown).  This is still probably too many, but a decent start in cutting down my kitchenware.

Taking inventory of your stuff is, I’ve found, essential to starting any minimization process.  I didn’t realize the items I’d accumulated until I pulled open all my drawers and took a look.  Here’s a look at the pile of items I have so far for donation and selling:

It’s still pretty possible (likely, even?) that I’ll get rid of more things as I start paying closer attention to what I do and don’t use frequently, but I’m happy with this initial dent I’ve made in my cookware.

Minimizing Cooking

Minimizing my cooking is going to take more work for me than the physical utensils, but I already have a good idea of how I want to go about it; namely, I want to get into the habit of keeping the basics around and using those basics in all my meals.

For years now I’ve been in the habit of keeping baking ingredients around, and recently I finally went ought and bought air-tight containers to keep them fresh and away from bugs.  I slapped some labels on them this week to make them easier to read from above.

Next I considered what I eat on a regular basis.  I eat a lot of chilis, stews, and things that go in tortillas (fajitas, sandwich wraps, etc); I’m big on one-pot meals and things that are easy to make and frequently yield leftovers.  That being the case, I cleared room for fresh and canned goods:

When it comes to refrigerated items, I keep a stock of butter for baking, and then some basic vegetables: carrots, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts.  Plus I always keep a bowl of fruit stocked for quick snacks.

My goal is to eventually weed the complexity out of my food-buying habits and be able to stick more consistently to the basics which, hypothetically, I’ll always have around.  Healthier, cheaper, and easier!

And So…

What I learned from this, as I have from most all of my minimalism challenges so far, is that the best way to keep your kitchen from getting out of hand is considering your items before they make their way into your home.  Know what you currently own so if you get something new either from yourself or as a gift from another, you know what it should replace or if it even has a spot in your kitchen.

Top image from iconoclassst on Tumblr