Yikes. Dormancy is not just for the squirrels, apparently. Let’s just say that life has thrown me some loop-de-loops these last few months, and something had to take a back seat for awhile. Nevertheless, the new year is always a good reason to make a fresh start; so for 2010 I’ll set a goal to write more often.

And what better way to start the new year than with a de-cluttered, reorganized kitchen? Granted, cleaning and downsizing is certainly not a new concept, but I found myself reusing some items I had intended to recycle, thus saving energy (for the recycling company) and space (in my kitchen). 

Yesterday started out as most Sunday mornings do in our house, with me scrounging up something for breakfast while the coffee pot does what it does best. I remembered the yummy English muffins my aunt sent us for Christmas, stowed in the vegetable crisper since there was no other place in the fridge. Yes, the refrigerator was on overload from the holiday leftovers and whatever else I stuffed in there and forgot about. As I grabbed the English muffins, I caught a glimpse of something brown underneath the crisper. Not in the crisper, but on the very bottom of the fridge. Yeah, ew. One of those “whatever else” items had thawed and expanded, depositing a very sticky brown mess of soup broth from the top shelf to the bottom. My lucky day, right?

I couldn’t will the brown goo to disappear, so I set to work finding the source and dismantling the entire fridge in the process. After an hour and a half of sleuthing and scrubbing, I had a sparkling-clean refrigerator and quite a few expired food-like items in need of disposing. (Unfortunately holiday food and condiments are rarely compostable, and most of mine had to be thrown. Ugh.) I was left with a legion of glass jars that I usually recycle, but I soaked them for a bit in hopes that I’d find a use for them eventually.

Little did I know that my cleanin’ jones would carry through to an overhaul of the kitchen pantry later in the evening. But it did! And within the same day, those empty jars found themselves employed once again. My pantry is typically a melange of produce bags stuffed with bulk items and open packages stuffed in Ziploc bags – peanuts, navy beans, sunflower seeds, chocolate chips, you name it — and half the time I don’t know I have something and end up buying more of what I already have. 

Well, no more. I consolidated and stored the orphaned items in the glass jars, then labeled those that could be easily confused with another item (such as baking soda, which looks exactly like baking powder). Of course, I know what walnuts and almonds look like, so the clear glass jars are perfect for storing bulk items; I can easily see what I have on hand. Plus, it’ll be easy and green when it comes time to buy more: Just take the jar to the co-op and refill it. Voila! No more plastic bag or package to bring home. 

Now I have a well-organized pantry to go with the clean refrigerator, and I found a new use for something I ordinarily would have tossed in the recycling. Granted, my conscience is nagging at me for having thrown old food away, but my lesson learned is stay organized to encourage buying fewer items — don’t buy more than I need or more of what I already have.

So this little soup-blop mishap yielded a lofty, yet attainable goal for the year: Create less trash. That includes reducing the amount of food we throw away and reusing items that could be tossed in the trash or recycling. 

And now for some good old-fashioned product placement
Speaking of staying organized and reducing waste, I’m totally gung-ho for the Grocery IQ app for iPhone. Before I found this nifty little tool, I was a perpetual forgetter of grocery list items. I no longer write out a list on paper, since I can just grab my phone when we’re out of something and the list is already made when I’m ready to shop. I’ve already noticed I don’t buy as many unnecessary items or forget ones we ran out of weeks before the shopping trip. And no more paper lists. Put a check in the column for “Makes my life easier”!