Yesterday morning I left my son in the care of my husband and walked off to take a shower. When I emerged from the bathroom the kitchen floor was covered in pots, pans and bowls of varying sizes. I really wish I’d taken a picture of that mess.
“I want to get rid of all of this,” my husband said. There was nothing wrong with the stuff we owned. It was all perfectly functional, but none of the items were stackable. That meant everything was a little topsy turvy in the cabinet and more often than not when you went to grab one thing out of the cupboard you had to move three or four other things out of the way to get to it.
The frugal part of me did not want to donate perfectly good dishes and bowls, but as I looked at my husband’s face I knew I was going to lose this battle. I’ll be honest it seemed crazy to discard all of this stuff in favor of items that could be organized more easily, but before I could blink he had gathered everything up off the floor and bundled it into large, brown paper bags. A few minutes later I loaded everything into our trunk and looked back at a very empty set of cabinets.
Thirty minutes after that we were standing in TJ Maxx attempting to find stackable replacements for everything we’d donated. The entire time I was shaking my head at the thought of needlessly spending money.
I think we scoured the store for about an hour, but we did find matching circular and rectangular pyrex storage containers and stackable ceramic serving dishes with lids. I’m a sucker for pretty containers that can also be used for storage.
With half a cart full of supplies we headed to the checkout and watched the numbers blink until a grand total of $118 flashed on the register screen. (I actually thought the price was quite reasonable for all that we purchased.) As luck would have it I just cashed out a bunch of reward points for completing surveys and used two TJ Maxx gift cards to pay for the majority of our purchase. I only charged $6.18 on my credit card.
Although I didn’t want to spend the money on this stuff I must admit that my cabinets are now filled with beautiful, stackable dishes, bowls and storage containers all neatly arranged.
I actually feel really good opening the cabinet doors and reaching in the cupboard for whatever I need. I’m so glad my husband convinced me to donate the old stuff in favor of new items that help keep things organized. Actually as soon as I washed all the new dishes and placed them in the cabinet I wondered why we didn’t do this years ago.
I think it’s a little crazy to donate perfectly functional items, but I must admit that I LOVE how clean and organized things are now.
Have you ever discarded perfectly functional things in favor of ones that could be organized more easily?
Every now and again I tackle the plastic avalanche in our cupboards and weed out things and keep only the matching ones, but it grows again.
I really should bite the bullet and get glass ones. Did yours come with lids? It looks great.
Buying new stuff is part of life. Sometimes people donate their old clothes and buy new ones that match 🙂 I don’t have a lot of pots and bowls to begin with since I’m still single but most of what I do have stack fairly well. I think you’ve made the right choice.
It feels incredibly good to have everything organized and cleaned out. A few days later and it definitely feels worth the money!
while not quit ein the same realm, i just spend $10 this past weekend for one of those drawer organizers to replace our plastic one. it looks SO much better now.
I didn’t NEED it but man does it make me happy to have organized drawers with enough space for all my spoons, forks and knives.
How were you living without one of those?