Kitchen Cure: Week Two

OK, so I started week two of the Kitchen Cure with finishing week one's tasks. Hey, it was a big task. I had to clean out the fridge and the pantry and throw away everything expired and consolidate and clean, clean, clean. This supposedly wasn't the "deep" clean that we are going to do next week but I went ahead and scrubbed everything down and now it is all spotless. At least, these two small items that only take up a fraction of my whole kitchen are spotless. It took me about 6 hours, but it was quite satisfying. My pantry has twice the amount of space as before and the fridge, well let's just say the fridge doesn't have any oozing green goo anymore. (I think it was originally spinach.)

The pantry: I know, did I really need to keep that giant thing of Kahlua? We never drink it except around the holidays. The biggest shocker, while checking expiration dates on canned goods, was to find out my Trader Joe's organic garbanzo beans are manufactured in Russia. Really now, Russia? I rarely shop at Trader Joe's anyways, but now I feel slightly repulsed buying from that shop. I understand my coconut milk coming from Thailand, but doesn't California grow a lot of garbanzos? Food for thought.

The fridge: This was more like a science project, cleaning out the leaking veggie goo and dried on sauces off the shelves. Normally, I don't like to use a lot of plastic bags. But now note all the nice bags keeping the produce off the shelves. There must be a compromise somewhere....cleaning more often perhaps? And making sure to eat everything we buy? That's too much to think about right now.


Week two has two tasks. The first is to go through all of your small appliances and figure out what you really need. This one was easy since I actually did this when we remodeled our kitchen. The only things I am getting rid of are the juicer (anyone want a nice juicer?) and the tea kettle. I realized the plug in tea kettle probably uses less electricity than the one that goes on the stove and heats the water faster anyways. I am also thinking of getting rid of our salad spinner, albeit, to replace it with a better one, so I don't think that counts.

The second task is to plan a project you want to finish in your kitchen. Considering it took me over 15 months to mosaic the back splash and I only finished it 2 months ago, I am going to pass on this one and be satisfied with the mosaic.