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I’m thrilled to welcome my good friend Susan Puckett to Between the Layers. Susan and I have known each other since the newspaper days in Atlanta, and like good friends, we tell each other things. She started telling me about her messy kitchen and how she finally had enough and reorganized it, and I said, WAIT! Write about this journey. So she did, and now we can all clean up our kitchens and keep cooking joyful thanks to Susan. Plus, that strawberry cake is something! - Anne By Susan PuckettMY FRIENDS CALL ME ‘’HURRICANE SUSAN.’’ When we get together to cook, one of them—Pam—can’t resist following behind me to clean up the scraps and spills I leave in my wake. And while no one has ever accused me of being a neatnik, I do like to know where ingredients are in my kitchen. It makes cooking more fun. Just recently, I rummaged through Asian noodles, seven kinds of flours, and Mexican dried chilies in search of brown lentils for a dinner salad. Down on my knees, I reached to the hinterlands of the bottom cabinets sensing lentils were in there somewhere. But by the time I extracted a bag, my kitchen floor looked like a crime scene, and my interest in making lentil salad or cooking anything was gone. How had the warm and fuzzy heart of my home devolved into a den of dysfunction?It was zapping my energy and killing my desire to cook. And sadly, that overpacked cabinet revealed a bigger problem: I have too many ingredients and tools with which to cook and no place to put them all. That’s compounded by the facts I have no walk-in pantry and I am of a no-waste mindset. I want to be a good steward of the earth and am reluctant to pitch anything that might wind up in a landfill, even if it’s a broken wooden spoon or container of fermented shrimp paste languishing in the fridge. In addition, cooking is not just a hobby. I am a food writer whose kitchen serves as a research lab for assignments. I try about 100 new recipes a year, and so I have to buy a lot of one-off ingredients. I lose money when I can’t find those lentils I’ve already purchased. I lose time when I need to dash to the store for the spice I know I already have someplace. And what really bothers me is that I see mayhem every time I sit at the table for a meal or to work on an assignment.
Decades before Marie Kondo became a household name, my mother gifted me a copy of Karen Kingston’s Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui: Free Yourself from Physical, Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Clutter Forever. It was a not-so-subtle Christmas hint to help mend my messy ways. I rolled my eyes, sat down, and read the book cover to cover. That tiny paperback inspired me that less can be more, and I downsized into a 1,150-square-foot condo. I purged what didn’t fit into my new smaller space. Eighteen years later, I still feel good about that decision. And I keep that book by my bedside to this day, along with Kondo’s blockbuster, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, which guides me through periodic purges.
When something has to give, try an old-fashioned spring clean.According to the website Oh So Spotless, most of us are overwhelmed by clutter and don’t know how to deal with it, which leads to even more clutter. To keep me motivated while I worked to clean up my kitchen, I tuned in to podcasts from decluttering gurus Dana K. White (A Slob Comes Clean) and Cassandra Aarssen (Clutter Bug). I found their pep talks helpful and loaded with tips like you should begin the project with a garbage bag and don’t try to overthink things. And while Marie Kondo didn’t devote much space to kitchens in her bestseller, I could hear her words of wisdom:
I heeded everyone’s advice and picked up a black garbage bag. For the next two weeks, on and off, I pulled, pitched, sorted, cleaned, and restacked, and here’s how I did it:... Subscribe to Anne Byrn: Between the Layers to read the rest.Become a paying subscriber of Anne Byrn: Between the Layers to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. A subscription gets you:
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