It's About to Get Ugly

The temperature hit 70 degrees on my back porch before noon.

What happens to folks when the weather turns warm? I don't know about you, but I want to start my spring cleaning.

Don't get me wrong, I know this warm-ish weather will be short lived, but it still gave me the itch to clean, sort, donate, toss and organize. After I saw this post on The Bitten Word about cleaning out their junk drawer, I was hooked and had to do some sort of cleaning or organizing. So I picked something I could do in a couple of hours.

Most of my kitchen is pretty organized. It has to be because I cook nearly every single day and I need to be able to find utensils and ingredients quickly.

I have three large utensil crocks on my counter: one for whisks, one for wooden utensils and silicone spatulas, and one for large spoons, metal spatulas and metal tongs.

My bulk spices are organized in a cabinet...

Every day glassware and dishes have their own space...



And for dining and special glassware, cookbooks and serving items, my hutch is the go-to place...



Like most people, I have a junk drawer where all those little odds and ends wind up - a couple of screwdrivers, a tape measure, marking pens, dog nail clippers, a small bag of twist ties - stuff like that. It's not particularly organized, but I know what's in there and I can usually find it quickly.

But I have an ugly secret. I have this other drawer, a drawer where every single utensil and some duplicates, for lack of a better place to put them, wind up in The Drawer....



This is the what I picked to organize.

I started by removing everything from the drawer and laying it all out on the counter of the kitchen island.



This is what was in there:

• 4 wine bottle openers
• 6 pieces of espresso machine measuring equipment for an espresso maker I no longer own
• 3 cheese slicers
• 1 ice pick
• 1 extra pair of kitchen shears
• 6 chip clips, not including the magnetized chip clip on the side of the refrigerator and the chip clip on the open torilla chip bag in the pantry
• 26 cheese and dip spreaders. Yeah, you read correctly - 26
• 3 pairs of pliers
• 6 nut crackers
• 4 nut picks
• 8 corn cob holders
• 2 bottle openers
• 1 bamboo sushi mat
• 10 sets of restaurant chopsticks still in the wrappers
• 4 sets of restaurant chopsticks apparently used, then washed
• 1 homemade fork that Tom made on the job the day he took his lunch of leftovers and forgot to take a fork
• 6 mini-knives
• 1 grapefruit knife
• 1 small serrated knife
• 2 pairs of tongs
• 1 syringe (no needle)
• 1 dual package of bamboo skewers, 12-inch and 10-inch
• 10 metal skewers
• 1 large pot thermometer
• 2 small metal ladles
• 1 wok spatula
• 1 very dull boning knife
• 1 very dull paring knife
• 6 wooden handled steak knives
• 1 decorative vegetable cutter
• 1 large, very cheap serrated knife
• 1 homemade salad tossing fork and spoon

Whew!

In the end, I started with three piles: keep for The Drawer, keep and store to stock our camp trailer and donate. The donate pile was the biggest. And I even wound up throwing some items away.

And what a huge difference...



The ice pick looks lonely in its own little cubby. Maybe I should put it in with the syringe just to keep it company.