The content of two shelves from my cupboard.

Cleaning out the kitchen isn’t easy, even after a week of eating only contents from the fridge, freezer and pantry. On one hand I want to get rid of unnecessary items, on the other I don’t feel right throwing away food. The problem is that I love cooking. I love trying new recipes with exiting ingredients. A lot of which aren’t available in the amount you need for one serving. This is particularly a problem if you need a certain kind of flour or other dry goods. They always come in great big bags or boxes which take up half the cupboard.

It’s the same with canned foods. I love canned tomatoes. Good canned tomatoes have so much flavor, such a beautiful texture. I use almost exclusively Mutti canned tomatoes from Italy, for almost anything that has tomatoes in it. For pasta I use mostly Barilla, simply because it is hard to get better ones here, but there are some great pastas out there. Like Rustichella d’Abruzzo is a the best pasta I have ever tasted. I did get rid of both tomatoes and pasta this weekend though, which was good.

There are other things than food creating a disturbance in the minimalist plan for the kitchen too. Rösti bowls, pizza oven, Ikea stainless steel bowls, milk frother, electric kettle, wok, fondue set, towels, two (!) immersion blenders and so on. These items are being used fairly regularly, even the fondue set, which admittedly no longer has the original pot, but a large black iron pot for proper cheese fondue. I have different pans for different purposes, different pots for different dishes.

And here you see my dilemma. Throwing away clothing was easy, one t-shirt easily replaces another. I don’t need two things when one will do, but here one won’t do. Two will do, or maybe three, or four. I can’t get myself to throw away food, but giving it away to charity isn’t so much an option here as in other parts of the world.

Now, my general solution to this would be just not to buy anything new until the cupboard is empty, but I happen to share the kitchen with someone else too. My wife is at least as bad as me when buying stuff, and she hasn’t joined me on the charge towards minimalism (which is kind of unfair to say as I haven’t really told her about this project). It’s hard to clean out a kitchen when she insists on buying low carb bars and stuffing them in there.

Well, after taking it all out, sorting through everything. Throwing out some old stuff, refilling some containers and joining som half full packs. I have a somewhat less cluttered kitchen, and despite throwing out like 4 bags of garbage, I am not much closer to a minimalist kitchen. This definitely needs a round 2 at some point. I wouldn’t say I failed in the kitchen, but even after a week of work, it was no win either.

Today the wife is out of town for work, which means I am having a guys’ night in. I will be serving buffalo wings, which lets me get rid of a bottle of buffalo sauce, as well as a couple of bottles of dressings. I have bought some fresh fruit and veg, which was within the confines of this project, but that is also the only thing. Nothing that is storable. I will be serving some drinks, so I need ice, but it is going in a cooler, not the freezer, thus will be gone tomorrow. This project has completely changed my shopping. I do not buy anything more than what I need at a particular time. No nice-to-have items, no just-in-case items. Even if they have sales, I am just buying for one and two days at a time, always considering what we have in the fridge, freezer or cupboard. No more hoarding of food.

As the clean out the kitchen week continues I am still only cooking with stuff I have. Today I am having chicken drums with bulgur wheat and some buffalo chicken sauce, and while making something with a lot of potential, I am not feeling particularly inspired. I don’t really know why, but there have been some long days at work lately, which certainly do not help. But, there is always a lot to do, so I guess it might just be one of those days. Looking forward to the having some guys over tomorrow. Bought chicken wings and celery for the gathering, but will be using exclusively ingredients I already have outside of those things. I am guessing I will be able to throw out a few bottles from the liquor cabinet when we are done, fewer things to own means less clutter.

It is the third day of the “cooking from only ingredients we already have” project as part of cleaning out the kitchen. The freezer is actually already showing results. And the removal of salmon yesterday and chicken for tomorrow is going to help immensely. Friday I am having people over, which means I can get rid of some more liquor. It also means I need to buy some fresh ingredients for the guests, but that’s another post. Today I am not shopping anything.

For the risotto I am using rice, onions, fish stock, and lemon. For the Salmon, I am using one half belly loin for two people, cooked at the end of the risotto. Making risotto is really easy. Fry the onion with the rice, and put in fish stock little by little until the rice is cooked. Take the pan off the stove, put in the fish, put a lid on, and let the heat from the rice cook the fish.

As I am going through this week, I am making som reflections on the life I have led up until now. I have always bought, not only what I need, but also what I might need, when shopping for food, never really considering whether it will end up simply as clutter. Now, however, I am finding that I consider more carefully what to buy and what to keep. The immediate response seems to be, “No, we don’t need that” or “yes, we can throw that away”. It is a strange, but good feeling.

Tomorrow I’ll be making chicken drums with bulgur wheat.

It is now day two of my clean out the kitchen week. I rummaged through our little freezer yesterday, and found some good stuff. I am making barbeque marinated chicken filets with couscous, of which I found a pack in the cupboard last week. It is only slightly over the date, and dry goods stay good forever, so a few days don’t matter much. For a sauce, I need something that doesn’t crash too much with the bbq marinade on the chicken. I am going for a korma sauce, which will be all emptied and can be thrown out after the next time I use it. Also I am adding some fresh asparagus from this weekend, some avocado, and a little sweet mango chutney for some extra flavour. Good stuff.

In the glass I have made a gin buck using a shot of Bombay Sapphire gin, half a lemon, ice and about half a can of ginger ale. A refreshing summer cocktail. Just a couple more of those and I have a bottle less in my drinks cabinet too.

The problem with cleaning out the kitchen this way is that it is real slow. Even if I don’t buy anything for this entire week, which I am not planning on doing anyway, I have still only grazed the top of my ingredients. I have meals for weeks here in dry goods, but will still have to fill up with fresh fruit, veg and meat. I guess I could try baking a bit more, that will certainly take some of the flour and yeast off my hands, but even then there are still plenty of cans and boxes left.

For tomorrow I am taking out some salmon from the freezer, perhaps to serve with a risotto and I am considering making a fruit smoothie. We do have plenty of frozen fruit.

The freezer is the enemy of a minimalist lifestyle. It is the very definition of hoarding food. Also, it destroys any culinary experience by ruining all meat, fruit, vegetables and everything else you may decide to put in there. I have for a while insisted that we get rid of our freezer/fridge combo and replace it with a small fridge and a wine cooler, but my words have fallen on deaf ears.

Anyway, back to cleaning out the kitchen. I am going to make a pizza. The dough is easy, flour and one of the 16 little packets of dry yeast I found, a little oil, some salt and you’re done. It needs to be worked with properly, I prefer the pull, fold and turn method of working for 30 minutes to make the dough into a flexible, elastic dough. One that doesn’t require a rolling-pin, but can be pulled to its proper size and thickness.

When rummaging in the fridge I find not only the meat and cheese I need, but also some ideas for tomorrow’s and Wednesday’s dinners.

The tomato sauce is simple. I have some fried tomato sauce, which mixed with some light spices tastes just wonderful. Also I find some canned pineapple, which although many argue shouldn’t be on pizza I both like on pizza and get to remove from the cupboard. Double win.

Now the only hard part is not buying lots of new stuff to fill my life with obligations of unmade food.

Holy crap there are a lot of completely useless CDs here.

As I am going through all the stuff I am getting rid of, week by week, It strikes me that I have a lot of CDs and DVDs with backup of all kinds of useful materials. By useful I of course mean stuff I downloaded from the web in like 2001/2002 which is still as relevant as ever. I have a bunch of early MacOSX icons of Calvin & Hobbes, Thundercats and the Simpsons. I have a nice collection of songs I ripped for my first iPod, which I am also sure I have kept somewhere and have to get rid of at a later stage, along with my old cell phones and cameras.

Backup disks are really hard to throw out. What if one day someone asks, “does anyone have a set of fun icons for my kid’s mac?” Then I can quickly say, yes I do. Or how about if someone says, “I wish I had an old version of Yellowdog Linux to install on my 10 year old Mac.” Again, I can jump to my feet and get it right away. Hell, I have OSX 10.0, 10.1, I have developers’ versions of OSX 10.2 Jaguar and 10.3 Panther, It just so pains me to throw these away, when you never know when you need. I simply cannot throw these disks out without at least looking at what’s inside, and the first thing I do is start copying things, in case I need them. I am not very good at this minimalism stuff.

There is not one disk worth saving, not really. Essentially, they’re nice to have. The very concept we are trying to rid ourselves of.

These actually got to stay, but I am wearing them until they die.

I love shoes, I mean I looooooooove shoes. My favorite shoes are Nike Air Force One and Nike Dunk, the retro styles. I have quite a few too. Not all retros, but almost all worn out and not worth saving. They are stacked in the attic along with all my other useless stuff I can’t seem to get rid of. What to do with them?

The wise thing is to throw them away. My wife refuses to let me give them all to charity, saying that one or two pairs are may be fit for charity but that they don’t want worn out old shoed with holes in them. I don’t understand, these shoes may be a little worn, but they are so awesome. I have an emotional bond to every single pair. Except for a pair of Nike SBs, I hate them. I so loathe them. I just keep them around out of spite. To show myself that not every shoe purchase is a good idea. That’s a good reason for keeping them around, right?

Before throwing any away, I sorted them, and two pairs are going to charity and the rest are going to the dump, well except for the four pairs I’m keeping. The true minimalists claim you can make it with only two or three pairs of shoes. I am not so sure. After throwing a bunch away, I still have seven pairs of sneakers, five pairs of dress shoes, a pair of tuxedo shoes, a buckled pair of traditional costume shoes, two pairs of basketball shoes, cross trainiers, three pairs of running shoes, two pairs of winter boots, a pair of hiking/mountain boots, a pair of winter dress boots, and probably some I can’t remember off the top of my head.

I am also getting rid of the shoe boxes, which for some ungodly reason I have kept around.

When transitioning towards a minimalist lifestyle, one of the big things I need to clean out is the kitchen. There is nowhere hoarders like me gets to push their hoarding to the limit like in the kitchen. You can stock dry goods, canned goods and lots of base ingredients in there. It is a mess. However, the main enemy, when trying to turn my life around, is the freezer.

Freezers really only have one purpose, save food for later consumption. Stockpile. Hoard. And we don’t really need it. Firstly, once food is in the freezer, it will never leave. I mean, every so often it will, but we save a lot more in there than we could ever use in weeks of cooking. We save leftovers “because you never know when you’ll want some of them.” Yes, I know. Never.

Secondly, buying and eating fresh is so much better. It is healthier to eat fresh fruit and veg and fresh meat; much healthier to make food from scratch. It tastes so much better with fresh ingredients. Rather than dry chewy meat from the freezer, you so want fresh meat with all its tenderness and flavour. Chicken is pumped so full of saline water these days that if you have a less than great freezer, ice crystals will form in the meat, completely drying it out.

I realize some families cannot afford shopping fresh every day. But even if you stockpile dry and canned goods, buy meat, chicken, fruit and veg fresh and notice the difference in flavor and texture. Remember, if you make food from scratch it is much cheaper than buying pre-fabricated, and so much better. Plus, after a while, you can throw out your freezer and have less clutter around the house.

Since I started this project I have been wondering what to do with it. I can’t really throw away a fully usable TV. I could have it as a second TV myself, but I can’t really fit it in our apartment. I could wait until we move, but that might be a while, and by that time a smaller skinnier tv is probably a better plan.

Now, however, the problem has been resolved. My parents need a second TV and are willing to take it, and I don’t need to go through the internal struggle of what to do with it. I guess that’s kind of cheating this project, but at least it’s gone. That’s the main point. Although the attic will little by little be getting cleared out, looking at how much crap we still have, it might be time to involve the wife some more in this project.