The Type Of Kitchen Item You Should Never Buy If You Want A Minimalist Home

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There's a refreshing lightness to a well-curated, minimalist interior. No fuss, everything in its place — it's a fantasy those with cluttered homes feel they can only dream of. The minimalist way can feel especially daunting when it comes time to tackle an overcrowded room like your kitchen. But that's what everyone gets wrong about minimalist interior design. It's not as out of reach as you may imagine. Simply kick your single-use kitchen item habit in favor of multi-purpose items to save space and streamline your kitchen setup.

Dual avocado knife and scoop, mini egg skillet, novelty kitchen timer — the list goes on and on. We are outright obsessed with kitschy single-use items to make cooking slightly easier or at the very least, more fun. While it's great to have pieces that make you smile, hoarding these sorts of kitchen gadgets can lead to stuffed kitchen drawers and counter clutter galore. If you want to whip your kitchen into shape, ditch extraneous single-use tools and invest in some solid kitchen essentials that carry the workload. 

Rule number one of minimalist home design: stick to the basics. Take a look at your kitchen items and ask yourself, do I really need this? Sort your supplies into single-use items and essentials. If there are some non-essential items you can't bear to part with, that's okay. Minimalism is flexible and focuses on being intentional, not on following a set of rigid rules that require you to toss everything that's unnecessary. Just use your discretion and focus on minimizing single-use gadgets. Is your kitchen looking a bit barebones after your purge? It might be time to stock up on vital kitchen tools worthy of a Michelin-star chef.

When it comes to getting down to the essentials, it can be helpful to seek guidance from the pros. Chef Thomas Keller wrote the book on keeping a tip-top kitchen – The French Laundry Cookbook, that is. While you may not be serving up gourmet meals, you can still benefit from having these basics on hand. According to Keller, some non-negotiable tools to keep in your kitchen are a good knife, sauté pans, stock pots, and universal lids among other multi-purpose essentials. A quality kitchen knife can do the job of an apple corer, avocado slicer, pineapple slicer, and many other specialty tools. And a basic set of pans works for cooking most dishes, eliminating the need for separate egg pans, crepe pans, or woks. If you follow our simple tips to declutter your kitchen, avoid bringing home single-use items, and stick to these basics, you'll be well on your way to a minimalist kitchen!