Packrat: Cleaning out the kitchen
A few days ago, I wrote a post describing how I cleared out a lot of my possessions before moving to a much smaller apartment. I was amazed at the response: the dozens of comments told me that there are a lot of people who are dealing with the same packrat problems that I am still trying to overcome. With that in mind, I decided to put up a few posts covering the issues that I went through when clearing out my clutter. If you have any specific areas that you would like me to discuss in these posts, please let me know!
When I started clearing out my home, I began in the kitchen. The center of my family life and my entertaining, the kitchen was also the messiest area in the house. Even after I dealt with all the things that didn't belong there, the strange foods that we never ate, and the weird gifts that we never used, I was still overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stuff that I had accumulated over the years. I returned to it several times over the next few months as I the moving date neared and I became less sentimental. My current kitchen is a little smaller than my old one, but it is a lot less cluttered, which makes it much easier to use.
Here is how I emptied it out, area by area:
