Lose the Clutter, Lose the Weight (41 page)
Read Lose the Clutter, Lose the Weight Online
Authors: Peter Walsh
Task 5:
CLEAR OFF ALL HORIZONTAL SURFACES
Given enough time, dust will accumulate on every horizontal surface in your home: shelves, countertops, end tables, coffee tables, and desktops. It's simply gravity at work.
But due to another, less-investigated law of nature, clutter gathers on all these surfaces, too. These cluttered surfaces become a highly visible contributor to household messiness. That creates two problems:
When these areas are cluttered, your home is cluttered.
When items pile up on these spaces, you can't use them for their intended purpose.
So a fundamental rule in home organization is that you have to keep flat surfaces clear and uncluttered. This will immediately create a more open and welcoming space.
Your kitchen has a high density of horizontal spacesâyour countertops, the top of your refrigerator and microwave, your kitchen island, and so forth. Your first step in decluttering them is to ask yourself “How do I want these horizontal surfaces to make my life easier?” (Rather than “What do I want to put here?”)
In any space, especially the kitchen, it's important to remember that flat surfaces are
not
for storageâthey're for preparing and serving.
If your vision for your kitchen is something like “I want to be able to easily prepare and serve food in my kitchen,” then look at whether the items on your countertops and shelves
help
you or
hinder
you. Anything that gets in your way or adds to your cleanup time needs to go. Clear out all the piles of mail, instruction manuals, work materials, knickknacks, collectibles, computers, food wrappers, and any other debris that doesn't belong.
If your horizontal kitchen spaces look like clean, functional workspaces, your kitchen will look larger and more inviting, and you'll be more likely to cook and less tempted to just load the family into the car and eat elsewhere.
WHAT'S YOUR FRIDGE TELLING YOU?
When clearing the horizontal surfaces in your kitchen, make sure to confront the big vertical surface looming over the room, too. Namely, your refrigerator.
Personally, I don't think anything should go on the refrigerator. If you must put kids' artwork, report cards, novelty magnets, and a calendar on the fridge, I urge you to keep them to a minimum, and only put them up after you first try to find a more logical home for them.
Jeanne Arnold (the household archaeologist you met in
Chapter 1
) and her colleagues found a link between the number of objects on the fridge and the degree of clutter in the rest of the home. They wrote that the surface of your refrigerator may act like a thermometer of sorts, giving a measurement of how much purchasing your family does and how much “stuff” you hold on to over time.
In other words, if you can't keep clutter off your fridge, you probably aren't doing any better in the rest of your home.
Task 6:
ADDRESS THE PREPARATION AREA
Kitchens function most smoothly when the zones are clearly defined. The preparation area is the space where you assemble the ingredients for a meal. This zone should allow you to pull meals together in the most efficient way possible.
The only items in this space should be the things that help you prepare your meals. This includes:
Pots and pans
Knives
Kitchen utensils like ladles and stirring spoons
Colanders
Herbs and spices
Step back and consider the space in your kitchen that's devoted to meal preparation. Look at the places where you keep your pots, pans, cutting boards, utensils, and storage containers. Are these items conveniently located?
How much space will you allow these items to take up? Which items do you regularly use, and which are just consuming precious space?
Grab a box and systematically go through all the drawers and cupboards that hold food preparation items. Get rid of the worn-out, unused, damaged, or just plain ugly stuff that no longer has a place in your home. If you find items that are not used for food preparation, decide where they belong or whether you should simply toss them. Pots and pans unused for more than 12 months can probably go. If you have duplicates of any items, some of them can go. Any plastic storage container without a lid must definitely go!
Task 7:
CONQUER THE COUNTERTOP COMMAND ZONE
This is the area where you put food on plates just before you serve your meals. This area should be clear, clutter-free, and functional, with handy access to platters, serving utensils, and flatware. Any other items that don't serve this purpose should go elsewhere.
Carefully examine this zone. Does it currently help you do this task, or is it cluttered with kitchen- and non-kitchen-related items? Whatever objects are currently getting in the way of an efficient serving space need to go. Decorative items that clutter the spaceâno matter how prettyâneed to find a new home.
Check your platters and serving dishes. Do you have a reasonable number, or are many of them long unused? Remove all your utensils and kitchen gizmos from their drawers. Decide which items you really need and use, and get rid of the ones you don't.
Task 8:
CLEAN UP YOUR DISHES
In most kitchens, dishes and glassware tend to fill up the cupboards that are available to them, whether or not the owners use them regularly.
For this task, bring out all dishes, cups, and glassware from your cupboards. Get rid of any items that are chipped or damaged, as well as those you simply don't use. Take this opportunity to toss out all of those free and souvenir plastic cups that seemed useful when you brought them home but now just take up space. If you have unmatched items, decide if you want to keep the irregular pieces or simply discard the partial set.
Now decide how much space you're willing to provide for your dishes. Put the items you're going to keep back into these spaces, making sure to keep like items together. Discard any items that don't fit into the spaces you've allocated.
Task 9:
ASSEMBLE YOUR CLEANING PRODUCTS
Kitchens can go from sanitary to grimy in a hurry! For this reason, it's crucial to keep the right cleaning products close at hand so you can quickly and easily clear a mess, remove a spill, or just wipe the countertops clean at the end of an evening.