Single Use Kitchen Gadgets Confession

Several years ago I heard a chef on a cooking show advise the audience that the Single Use Kitchen Gadget was a money & space waster and to never buy anything for your kitchen that was only able to accomplish one thing.

I can’t remember who it was, but as a professional organizer, I loved that they said it.  I revel in eliminating the extra gadgets to allow space for the more efficient items resulting in a less cluttered space.  When it comes to the tasks in the kitchen, most can be accomplished with a generic utensil so the purge does not leave one unable to accomplish the task, it just requires a little more pre-planning.

If you want suggestions on what you don’t need or what to use if you don’t have something, there are lots of lists, hacks, and pins out in cyberspace for you to peruse.  That is not what this post is meant to provide.

This post is so I can confess. 

If you look in my kitchen, I did not follow that chef’s advice.  Like many of my clients, I purchased (or was gifted) several Single Use Gadgets and have felt the need to keep them despite the amount of space they consume.  Don’t get me wrong, I use every one of these SUGs so I had to figure out how to keep them and not feel like a really big hypocrite.  So I asked myself 3 things.

What do I really want to keep? 

How often do I use it?

What am I willing to do to get to it when I want it?

The answers to these questions were all connected to our social calendar.  The friends and family gatherings that require food to be cooked in quantities and kept warm for the multiple hours of grazing was the determining factor on if we would keep it and where.  

When I need these items, I have already planned time dedicated to the event.  I’m not in a rush and I have thought thru how I’ll use them when mentally working out the details of our guests’ experience.

Basically I have the extra few minutes to move things out of the way to get to it.  I’m not in the “school night/work day, homework finishing, get dinner on the table before bath time rush”.

I won’t go into detail on everything that I move out of the way in order to pull out the 3-bowl slow-cooker, but I will tell you that it is in my kitchen, as is my chafing dish, fondue pot, vegetable/fish grilling basket, relish tray, and cake platter.

My suggestion: Place in an area where you can get to the item with some advance planning and yet not so out of the way that you have to get in the car and drive to the storage unit.

I apply this to all things in the house.

Ask the questions and then believe the answers.