Day 4 of our challenge we are going to turn our focus on the kitchen.  I have decided in the past to completely clean out our kitchen for health reasons and adopt a new lifestyle. This might be the perfect time to start this IF you have always wanted to do this and just couldn’t throw away (donate) the junk food.  About four years ago I was so tired of being tired all the time.  I was tired as soon as my alarm went off in the mornings, I was tired in the shower, I was tired even when I drank my mochas.  I would say out loud “I am tired of feeling this way, something has to change.” We decided that our health was going to be a focal point for a quarter of the year.  Why only a quarter? How this works for us is you hit the four major pillars for a quarter, since there are four quarters in a year.  You develop new habits during that quarter time that stay with you long term.  There is always something new to learn so we just keep improving and going towards our goals.  Our health was something we both needed to improve upon so we set some goals.  One of them being the type of food we were buying and stocking our cabinets, pantry, and refrigerator with.  If you ever needed visual proof as to why you are tired of whatever story you are telling yourself go look inside your pantry, cabinets, refrigerator, freezer or car (fast food containers/cups) and you can see why.

We first hit our pantry and cabinets, we took out everything that was expired, including sauces, dressings, frosting cans, rice boxes, seasonings, oils, and canned foods. We checked every single item and looked at the date, we then decided if it would help us towards our goals.  What we found we had two piles going mainly, one was expired and throw away. The other pile was to donate to a local food shelter instead of throwing away what someone else could use to fill up their bellies.  Hardly any of it was going back into our cabinets or pantry because processed, boxed food isn’t going to get us our goals.  We even decided to tally up and estimated the amount we spent on all the items to help remind us of what we spent on unused food that wouldn’t help us with our health goals.

Next was the refrigerator and freezer, that was fun, especially when you have a deep freeze and you find things on the very bottom you “forgot” about.  You know when the kids think they have to have that item at the store and it gets lost in the deep freeze.  To be completely honest and transparent, yes we had things expired over two years and once I had a fish in our freezer for three years because our oldest caught her first fish and we couldn’t throw it out.  Nasty, but hey, it goes with the whole illogical thinking of I have to keep something for a long extended amount of time even though we aren’t ever going to touch it again.  LOL

Next, we looked at what we really use in the drawers, pots/pans, pyrex dishes and items like that. I had a huge donation pile set up because I did not need three rolling pins or over 50 forks.  We do entertain a lot but I didn’t need that much stuff to store and junk up my kitchen.  There use to be a mentality for us to keep everything stocked so we never run out. But when any of us would open up the cabinets or pantry door we would be looking at so much stuff we couldn’t find anything easily.  No buying a bigger home won’t work either, you just buy more stuff! That seems to be our youngest daughter’s reasoning lately, if we could move to a bigger house then everything would fit and we don’t have to get rid of anything.

Today it was easy for us to find 21 items to remove from our kitchen area, we went through all our cabinets and looked at the coffee mugs, glasses, then over to the spices and so on.  Pretty soon we had a nice little pile on the floor of plastic holders that had been cracked or broken that we used for parties.  Looked at our vitamins, protein powders and supplements to make sure they hadn’t gone bad or expired.  Some of those are only good for 30 days once you open it.  I love to cook and create amazing meals, we meal prep every Sunday morning as a family. I looked at all the containers we had and matched the lids to containers because those never match.  Either I have too many lids and not enough containers or vice versa.  I have never been able to figure that out, where they all go, they all go into the drawer together so why don’t they come out that.

How did you do removing 21 items today? Did you find over 21 items today? Don’t forget to donate to your local food shelter if you can.

Much love