Kitchen Trouble Spots: What I'm Organizing Now

January is designated as “Get Organized Month” by the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO), and it’s no surprise that Netfix released “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo this month too. January can be a great time to get organized, as many of us want a “fresh start” to the new year.

What am I organizing now? While my kitchen tends to be pretty organized, in the past week I’ve identified three trouble spots that I’ve tackled—or plan to address:

• Water bottles and plastic cups: Do plastic water bottles secretly multiply while we’re sleeping? Our bin for these was overflowing, so I got my whole family involved to pick out our favorites and toss some. It was harder than I thought it would be, but we were able to narrow down our collection to a more reasonable amount.

• Beer glasses: My husband is a home-brewer, and we often visit breweries locally or when on vacation. This has led to an over-abundance of beer glasses. I’m talking pint glasses, tasting glasses, goblets, pilsners, weizens. We have the glass for every kind of beer. The “collection” has expanded from its original location, so while working on the plastic glasses, I realized the beer glasses were now in a second location. I decided to count them, and was shocked to discover that we have 46 beer glasses. For two people in the house who drink beer. And while we often have many more people over who drink beer, this number of glasses seems excessive. This issue is that many glasses remind us of events or locations: that trip to Mt Rushmore, my first 10K trail run, our engagement party, so they may be hard to part with. I’m honestly not sure yet how to tackle this challenging project, and I’ll need to involve my husband in the process. Stay tuned!

• Cookbooks: This is another area that’s on my radar as my girl loves to cook and bake, and received several new cookbooks for her birthday and then for Christmas. Now they won’t fit in the shelf we had dedicated to her cookbooks (yes, just her cookbooks). I have several shelves for other cookbooks, many of which I use all the time, and others not so much. As with the glasses, some of the cookbooks are sentimental as they were gifts from special people. or connect us to a trip or event. I haven’t counted them yet, but do plan to thin out our collection to ones that we really use and treasure.

What are you organizing this month??