The 90/90 Decluttering Rule That Will Change How You Organize Your Kitchen

No matter how big our total living space, we always seem to fill it with more things than we are able to find room for. Kitchens seem especially prone to this issue, because it is one of the most trafficked areas of a home, is used multiple times a day by all members of a household, and also just contains the largest amount of items that can potentially be used in any given visit to the space. All that to say that kitchens are prone to becoming a haven for clutter, the kind of clutter that it can feel overwhelming to deal with.

Enter the 90/90 decluttering rule, which states that anything in your kitchen that you either haven't used in the last 90 days, or don't plan to use in the next 90 days, should go. That doesn't necessarily mean you should trash it entirely, or even necessarily put it in deep storage. Especially if it is an essential kitchen tool every kitchen must have. But if an item fails the 90/90 test, at the very least, it shouldn't stay permanently living on your countertops or otherwise out in the open. If they are things you want to at least keep handy somewhere in the kitchen, they should be stored in cabinets you don't access as often, and put behind more commonly used items like toasters and blenders.

There are a number of common kitchen items to toss for a less cluttered space, from expired foods to heavily worn pots and pans. Those will be some of the easiest things to get rid of when you start analyzing each thing in your kitchen to see how the 90/90 decluttering rule applies to it. A lot of this process will be pretty cut-and-dry and not require too much in the way of "what-ifs." However, you might run into some tricky decisions when you begin this process.

For instance, what if you're performing this task in the fall, when items you might need for cold recipes for hot summer nights – such as an ice cream maker — wouldn't fall into the 90/90 decluttering rule at that particular point in time? In terms of seasonal items, revisiting the 90/90 decluttering rule a few times a year is the easiest way to solve that hiccup. The first time you do it will be the most difficult, but once you get over that hurdle, subsequent declutterings will be much simpler if you do them frequently enough. And as mentioned prior, you aren't necessarily throwing everything away, just rethinking how you store it. If it takes a few extra steps to dig out an item you don't use every three months, it's worth the effort for the sake of a neater, more streamlined kitchen.