The following is a guest post from regular contributor, Kristin at The Gold Project.
Have you ever stopped and looked at your kitchen container stock? I really hadn’t until about a month ago. I walked into my pantry to get something, looked down and realized our food containers were sitting in one of our laundry tubs. Let me say they did not start out that way. I guess we kept adding more and more containers until they wouldn’t fit in one of the smaller baskets on the shelf.
At that moment, I decided enough was enough. I collected all of the other food storage containers I had on the shelf and in other areas of my kitchen and decided to take the one month challenge. I have done this with other items in my home like kitchen utensils and toys in the past and let me tell you, it works. It is painless and very beneficial.
One Month Container Challenge
So, how does it work? I place all of a particular item in a central place. This time it is my food storage containers in this black tub. As I need them, I take them out of the tub, use them, and place them where they would originally go in the kitchen. After a month, the items that are still left in the tub will be collected and donated.
I am proud to say that I got rid of over half of the containers I had.
Before I donated any of the containers, I matched the bottoms with their lids. This is everything that will be donated. A total of 30 containers and 6 extra lids.
All of the items collected filled up an entire trash bag. These items will not be thrown away. I will take them to our local Goodwill with the rest of my home purge donations.
This technique will work so well with many items in your home that you are looking to declutter. Have you ever taken a one month challenge in your home? If so, was it beneficial for you?
My name is Kristin and I am a middle school career education teacher by day and a mommy/wife/blogger by night. I am married to my high school sweetheart and we have two loving children. We recently made a life-changing move to Arkansas, so our new house is always under construction. I get excitement out of finding new creative, functional, and cute ways to organize things! I also enjoy writing and documenting life as it happens. So, I put these loves together and created The Gold Project. With the help of my husband, I am attempting to turn our house into a home. So, check out this special place of mine and take this journey with me!
Kerry says
Pure genius!! We have so many Pyrex bowls, containers, etc. and I swear we use maybe a 1/4 of them. I’m going to set this up and donate what we don’t use, or put some extras or less commonly used sizes in less prominent retail space in my kitchen!!
Jessica [Havok] says
This makes much more sense than it should xD
My problem isn’t necessarily that we have too many containers, it’s that we have too many different kinds in too many different sizes (though we do use them, and the various sizes are nice to have). We have a few larger containers that could go, through – they’ve sat on a top shelf all alone for the past year or so without being used!
Pamela says
That’s funny!! I just got rid of all my old containers and purchased a set of Lock N Lock nesting bowls from QVC. They take up on the space of the biggest bowl with all their lids on. What a treat they have been.
Kylie says
Oh my gosh, why isn’t this common sense? I’m definitely going to try this. Question – did you reuse any of the ones you had washed and put away? Or did you always use new ones from the central container?
Brenda says
I have never heard of this one month challenge before, but it sounds like a fantastic idea! I shared the idea with my husband and we’ll have to see what we want to start with first. Thanks so much for sharing.