Kondo Your Kitchen

Buy Food in Bulk

When it comes to food packaging, the best way to maintain a sustainable cabinet is to buy in the bulk section: Find a local store with bins of beans, grains, spices and nuts and bring your own containers to cut down on plastic waste. Then, rather than purchase new plastic containers, clean out jam and juice jars and give them new life. Stuff them with beans and grains, which make for beautiful, colorful displays, then label them and add a purchase date. I can almost guarantee that you’ll feel that “holding a puppy” feeling once you’ve stripped out disposable packaging and have a cabinet full of glistening storables.

Clean Out Your Fridge, Kondo-Style

Decide whether that five-year-old jam in the back could afford to spark joy in the compost (yep, jam is compostable). Find something on the verge? Soup it. Still edible, but not your cup of tea? Offer it to a neighbor, or freeze it. Actual cup of tea? Why not reuse that teabag?

For moving forward: think hard about the food you buy and cook, before it even heads to the fridge. We’ve got lots of strategies for shopping smartly, here.

Don’t Throw Away

Here’s the rub: if you pick up something and it doesn’t spark joy, don’t throw it out! Consumer goods are very, very resource intensive; that kitchen gadget took coal, oil, and water to build, and yet more packing and gas to distribute. Donate it, recycle it, repurpose it. Throwing something out merely to discover you need it after all and then replacing it with something newer and shinier is not sustainable. Minimalism is fantastic, and should be something we all strive for as we move forward, but all that joyless stuff can’t be sent to landfill for the purpose of our mental clarity.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Marie Kondo and wish she was in my living room — or kitchen —shoelessly reminding me to give gratitude for the objects and spaces in our life. Tidying does have a calming effect for many, and by all means find your life-changing magic. But, the same amount of thought that goes into being thankful for the objects that make us happy, should be spent reflecting on our modern, consumerist lifestyle and our relationship to waste.