Domino effect

So I went and pulled those glass dishes out on Monday. Tuesday, when I had to go into the cellar (that´s also where the trashcans are), I took the plastic box I´d put them in along and dumped the whole contents into the trash. They hadn´t hit bottom before I caught myself wanting to dig in and retrieve them. So pretty, and I had them for so long, and besides, they were a gift from Granny. Well, actually, they were just bought off some money she had given me, and she´d never even seen them. So, I stuck to my guns and left them where they´d fallen.
Yesterday, I ditched the bowls to that set I still had in my kitchen, and then dug out the other glass cups and plates I have, which had been languishing hidden behind the pots in the kitchen, and, after washing them up, put them into the cupboard formerly occupied by the white ones, where they are relatively more accessible and have a chance of being used. The space that used to hold them will be the new home of my pasta machine that used to clog up a whole compartment of my hallway cupboard, and the space that held the bowls is the new storage for spare dinnerware (we have two of each in use, but did get some extras for MIL´s visits, so there are actually three sets of our most-used ones, but they don´t forcibly all have to sit in the main dishware cabinet, do they?)
Going through all that stuff went a long way towards showing how far our culinary habits have changed during the last years. Witness the layer of dust on those 36cm-diameter-pans that I was once so keen on getting because I thought you had to have them if you wanted to be a good cook. It´s, with me, something like a father-daughter-thing. My father is, himself, having a passion for good food, likes to cook and spends a fortune on cookbooks and kitchen gadgets. He´s also always been super critical of me and my lifestyle. For a long time I tried to put together a set of kitchen equipment he´d approve of, even though he has been inside my flat only once and will not enter it again (long story there, let´s just say we´re both quite stubborn).
Having good kitchen equipment, as in, pots, pans, knives, and such, is in my opinion really essential for good cooking, So, getting me pots and pans of good quality wasn´t all a waste of money.
Getting multiples of each, on the other hand, was. I simply do not do meals that have several courses where I´d need to have, say, three big pans at once.
And I´ve by now discovered that the smaller portions we eat can easily be prepared in the smaller pots I have, so, the big ones that hold a gallon or more of liquid are, for all practical purposes, not used any more.
Another category of rarely-used items are the multiple microwave glass dishes I once thought I absolutely had to have. Nowadays, I rarely ever use the microwave any more, and if I do, I find myself using the same two dishes all the time (again, the best ones). Thus, the other ones are also candidates for eviction. Even if I want to keep them in case one of the others should break (it does happen sometimes), I can take them to the cellar, after all, glass doesn´t rust or get musty. And that would free another compartment of prime kitchen cupboard.
This is getting interesting, really. Perhaps, when I´m through decluttering and reshuffling, I´ll finally know just how much cupboard space I really need. And be able to put what I have in there without building stacks of things that require careful disassembling every time I want to use a part of them.



Julia