Get rid of mostly used items to reduce household clutter
February 9, 2009 by Jennifer Chait
Filed under Home & Living
You shouldn’t get rid of ALL your half-used items. Waste not, want not right? However, there are some mostly used items you should sort up and out of the homestead.
For example:
Any liquor bottles sitting around less than 1/4 – 1/8 full. In most cases, 1/8 is not even enough for a mixed drink, it’s just a bottle taking up storage real estate. Use the 1/4 rule to double check alcohol you hate. If you’re not gonna drink this stuff ever, recycle the bottle and save some space.
Kitchen food jars. The fridge is one of those places in your home, that always seems to be short on space. If you have a million 1/4 – 1/2 full jars, see if you can move their contents to a smaller container, thus freeing up space.
Spice jars that are less than 3/4 full can usually be recycled. 3/4 is actually a lot of spice. The issue here is that often, when you look in a cupboard, and see spice jars that are less than 3/4 full, they’re expire. There are those folks who use up their spices, but it’s more common to see expired half-empty jars.
What else can you think of?
Over the Christmas holiday, I took on the refrigerator and started cleaning, organizing, and tossing. As I started tossing, I stopped myself and attacked the problem another way. I repackaged items I liked, but had bought in bulk, i.e. family sized Marion berry jam. I filled a canning jar with the jam and put in the freezer, then put the remainder in a small container in the fridge. I also took steps to use it, like buying bread. I now make a conscious effort to design my meals around what I already have. I am amazed at how must food I added to my composter on a weekly basis. I was throwing away so much money. My efforts moved to the pantry, where I organized and inventoried my entire pantry, again making a conscious effort to use items we already had. Any food we didn’t like we gave away to our friend “the human garbage disposal”. We now have more room in our pantry and refrigerator & we are saving money on our grocery bill.