MiniMonday: Cookbooks and Crappy Pans

I love to cook. In fact, most of what my husband and I eat is prepared by me in our tiny kitchen. But with a tiny kitchen, I barely have room for anything!

As little as we seem to have, the kitchen is piled higher and deeper on most surfaces with clean dishes, gizmos in use, food, spices, cutting boards… It’s a perpetual mess!

Because of this, I’ve been fairly strict about how much has been allowed into my kitchen. I’ve thrown out old dishes when we got new ones and I’ve gotten rid of gizmos I hardly use (which, surprisingly, didn’t just include the one-purpose-wonder yonanas machine; I got rid of the blender too!).

Still, one ‘necessary’ part of my kitchen has still been stored in the bedroom half of our beloved “cute studio flat” (cough tiny one-room-attic):

Cookbooks.

In the nearly six and a half months that I’ve been married, I’ve moved these from countertop to microwave-top to our bookshelf by the bed. I’ve flipped through them, but when it’s time to cook I almost always reach for my phone… and through it, the internet wherein resides all of the food knowledge of the universe. I also very rarely use recipes at all.

So today, they went in the donation box. So did my recipe cards.

There’s a few recipes I’d love to retrieve from my family and record, but my cookbooks are pretty generic. The Better Homes cookbook I have isn’t the one my dad scribbled all over as he perfected his snickerdoodle recipe. My great-grandma’s pickled beets and o’henry bars can’t be found between the covers.

On another note, the secondhand pans I’ve been using for the last six months have started peeling Teflon. I threw away my trusty little saucepan… and I bought a cheap cast iron skillet! Who knew that Walmart would carry made-in-the-USA pre-seasoned cast iron? I didn’t. I was surprised at how non-stick iron could be. I’ll be replacing my soup pot soon too… someone used a metal implement to scrape the sides. Any suggestions? I think a cast iron pot would break our stove.

So… What have you been doing to declutter on your journey toward minimalism? Your challenge this week is to look at your books again. You may have gotten rid of some, but are there others that you rarely if ever use, and could easily do without/switch to an electronic copy? then get rid of them. 🙂

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