The Minimalist Kitchen: Declutter Your Kitchen

You can pare your cooking clutter.

September/October 2009
By Misty McNally 
minimalist kitchen
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Architect and The Not So Big House author Sarah Susanka keeps her North Carolina kitchen clutter-free by minimizing the number of appliances and gadgets she buys.
Photo By Seth Tice-Lewis
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Sarah Susanka, architect and author of the The Not So Big House books, thinks kitchens are out of control. Oversize appliances and gadgets that do everything we once did by hand now clutter our countertops and eat up storage.
 
This leads her clients to think they need bigger kitchens; more than three-quarters ask to start their home remodel with that room. “The attitude is, the bigger the better—and that’s absolutely not the best kitchen to be cooking in,” Susanka says. “There’s an appropriate scale, and having more and more cabinets and space between countertops can make it feel unusable.”

The first step to a great kitchen isn’t to remodel, but to clear away the space and energy guzzlers that clutter your counters and eat up storage. Underneath all those gadgets, you might already have the kitchen of your dreams.

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Kitchen solutions

Some tasks are better done by hand. Try these low-kilowatt options.

Task

Instead of a…

Try this…

-Grating cheese

-Chopping, slicing or dicing veggies

-Kneading bread

-Food processor

-A handheld cheese grater

-A knife

-Knead by hand

-Scrambling eggs

-Stir-frying or sautéing veggies

-Cooking steak, hamburger or chicken

-Nonstick pan

-Wok

-Indoor grill

-Cast-iron skillet

-Grilling sandwiches

-Panini maker

-Two cast-iron skillets (the second to weigh the sandwich with)

-Frying

-Roasting

-Stewing

-Deep fryer

-Electric roaster

-Slow cooker

-Dutch oven

-Citrus juicing

-Electric juicer

-Wooden reamer

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