Why I Clean Out My Kitchen Every Fall

A long time ago when we started Apartment Therapy and The Kitchn, we talked a lot about how homes are living beings and how so many suffer from pains and illness, it’s almost as if they are crying out for help. Maxwell responded by writing the Eight Step Home Cure and started leading online “cures” on Apartment Therapy. Soon after I created a ten-step Cure just for the kitchen and turned that into an online experience. Why the kitchen specifically? Because just about every home kitchen I’ve ever seen, including my own and those belonging to chefs I know, has some ailment, unique to the practice of cooking and eating. And because we believe that there is no kitchen ailment that can’t be cured.

Some of us simply need a regular deep-cleaning, a purging of supplies, and a freshening up. Others have some deep wounds that need healing, way too many gadgets and no need to use them, a tiny kitchen with no room, a filthy kitchen, a sad kitchen.

Others of us perhaps had a kitchen that served us, and then something happened in our lives. The woman in the photo above reminds me of myself on some days when it all gets to be too much and the room that was once my sanctuary starts to drain me.

Time for a Cure.

It’s during the fall when I get the urge to purge. I usually travel a lot during the summer and my kitchen is abandoned to some extent. As the seasons change and the temperatures drop, I come back inside and want to be ready to cook, tons. Do you feel the same way? If you can roll up your sleeves and commit to about an hour a day for ten days, we can help you. It’s free, we’ll hold your hand, and you’ll have a lot of peers supporting you.

And tell me, do you clean out your kitchen each year?

(Image: Flickr member liquene licensed for use under Creative Commons)