One of my favourite clients is a self described mad scientist.
Shelly loves to try new things, especially in the kitchen. She’s a fruit and veg preserver and maker of lotions and potions, loves baking and soapmaking. She is often suddenly struck with a desire to create something and pulls everything out in her hunt for just the right tool. She has A LOT of specialised tools and equipment, some home made.
The problem is she has very little storage in her cool vintage kitchen (original cupboard handles!), so the two drawers (yes two drawers, in the entire kitchen!) and the cupboards are stuffed full of useful things that she uses off and on most years.
The reason she called me in was because her family were going bonkers trying to find the fish slice. Or a sieve that wasn’t sticky with some unknown goo. They’d had it up to here! (just imagine my hand making a chopping move somewhere above my head.)
If you’re in love with essential oils, learning to decorate cakes or crafty in any way, you’ll know that a whole lot of gear comes along with doing the things you love. The trick to managing all your passions is to get organised.
But first…
Declutter! (You knew it right?!) I can guarantee that there will be some things that you no longer need, or have replaced with something better.
After a good declutter of things that Shelly decided she no longer needed (damn she was amazing!) this is what we did in her kitchen –
- Pulled out everything that wasn’t used by the family for normal daily, weekly or monthly food prep and cooking.
- Combined tools and equipment that are exclusively used for an activity and stored them together.
- Raided her reusable plastics and tins for good sized containers.
- Used a label maker to note her personal descriptions of what was inside.
- Stacked some of the containers in the kitchen cupboards – most often used on the top, less used on the bottom.
We also moved some of the equipment to the garage because they were the least used or just too big to keep in the kitchen. Big plastic bins with tight fitting lids came in very handy.
This freed up the newly organised kitchen for day-to-day use by the whole family who were thrilled! And so was Shelley, mainly because there was no excuse for everyone to take their turn to cook and do dishes.
You see, Shelly and I had a plan all along…
Everyone in the family was a winner. The family loved the organised, Tidy kitchen (and were happy to keep it that way). Shelly was over the moon because she could find what she wanted when her inner mad scientist went crazy and it “magically” turned out that she no longer had to cook every single meal.
It could even be described as a Win/Win for everyone, unless you’re allergic to that phrase, in which case sorry for inflicting it on your eyballs.
Bye for now,
Liz
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