The kitchen: it’s the heart of the home, the gathering place for families and friends, the breeding ground for excessive utensils. Today’s 5 Minutes or Less organization project brings us into this sphere of family togetherness and “What the heck is this?”edness that we call our kitchens.

Obviously a total kitchen declutter takes longer than 5 minutes, so today we’re focusing on just one area: the utensil drawer. Or drawers. Depending on your style…

Step One: Look at your hands. How many do you have? Unless you’ve been the lucky recipient of a nuclear waste accident that left you with extra appendages and Spidey-sense, you probably have two. Keep that in mind as we move on to…

Step Two: Dump all your kitchen utensils into a big pile and sort like with like: wooden spoons with wooden spoons, spatulas with spatulas, etc.

Step Three: Imagine it’s a Friday in middle school gym class. You know what that means: dodgeball day. Aka: self-esteem reduction day. Now imagine that you are the coolest kid in the class, the star pitcher of the baseball team. Your name is Chad or Chaz or Chet. No one really knows, and it doesn’t matter. You’re awesome. And you’re about the kick some ass. Naturally, your underpaid, weekend-focused gym teacher has made you team captain and it’s time to pick your favorites. The guys who are going to get the job done. The ones who are going to help you cream the other team. To accomplish this, you must choose the strongest, the best, the most ruthless. The ones who won’t feel bad about nailing the band kid square in the back with a dodgeball sent at light speed.

Okay… I might need to back off this metaphor a bit. I’m actually starting to get some PTSD-like shakes. (Note: I was band kid).

Bringing it back to decluttering: you are the team captain of your kitchen and you need to pick the best utensils for the job. Remember: you only have two hands. How many wooden spoons can you actually use at once? Two, if you’re extremely dexterous. (Which, if you’re Chad/Chaz/Chet, you probably are.)

To give you some context, at my house, we have two wooden spoons: a round one for sweets and a flat one for savories. Despite this very logical division, Josh is constantly asking, “Which spoon is which again?” And I tell him the no-duh answer, “The round one is for sweets because if you eat too many sweets, you get rounder.” Then he responds with something like, “But you could get round from eating savories, too, like bacon.” Ah, men and their silly brains…

 So, pick your best, your brightest, your most stir and scrape-friendly utensils and donate the rest. Why? Because you don’t need them. They are cluttering up your life and your kitchen. They are preventing you from using the absolute best tool for the job. They are the weakest link in your dodgeball game. It is Friday, after all.

Rose Lounsbury is the Dayton, Ohio area’s up-and-coming professional organizer. After blogging about her own journey toward a minimalist lifestyle, Rose was inspired to start Less, a minimalist-minded professional organizing company. If you’d like Rose’s help with an organizing project at your home or office, please call her at 937-626-9030.