Do Less (3 page)

Mark Bittman, author and
New York Times
columnist, claims even the best chefs can get by with a small set of kitchen tools. With his no-frills, $200–$300 collection of kitchen tools, Bittman is capable of cooking gourmet meals. Here is a no-frills kitchen supply list for people who cook gourmet meals at home:

• 8-inch chef's knife
  
• Instant-read thermometer
  
• 3 stainless steel nesting bowls
  
• Tongs
  
• 1 sheet pan
  
• Plastic cutting board
  
• Paring knife
  
• Can opener
  
• Vegetable peeler
  
• Colander
  
• 3 sizes of cast-aluminum saucepans
  
• Medium nonstick cast-aluminum pan
  
• Large, deep-sided heavy steel pan
  
• One lid
  
• Slotted spoon
  
• Skimmer
  
• Heat-resistant rubber spatula
  
• Bread knife
  
• Big whisk
  
• Food processor
  
• Salad spinner
  
• Microplane grater
  
• Coffee and spice grinder
  
• Immersion or stand blender
  
• Whetstone for knife sharpening
  

Most of us cook simple meals and rarely host formal dinner parties, yet have twice as many kitchen tools as Bittman suggests. Why do we have so much stuff in our kitchens? We confuse owning things with doing things. Owning a bread machine or bread loaf pans does not mean you will bake bread every week. As you weed through your cake pans and egg slicers, remember that the tools don't make the chef; the meal does.

The blueprint for going minimalist in the kitchen will be your six favorite meals that you cook regularly. You'll want to keep all the tools needed for them and your pantry stocked with whatever they require. Everything else can go. That includes the ice cream maker you used twice ten years ago, the canning supplies you had the best of intentions for but that are still in unopened boxes, and six of the seven paring knives in your utensil drawer. They can all go.

But what if you need those things someday? You just might. Perhaps in fifteen years, you'll have a formal dinner party and want to try your hand at making watermelon sorbet. Or your sister will bring you a box of peaches from her trip to the farmers' market and you'll suddenly be inspired to make jam. But you no longer have that ice cream maker, those canning supplies, and all those paring knives that would be so handy for peeling twenty pounds of peaches.

If the occasion arises where you might actually need items you've gotten rid of, here is what you do: You make do. You get resourceful. You ask friends if anyone can loan you an ice cream maker for a weekend. You learn how to make sorbet just using your freezer, a plastic bucket with a lid, and a timer reminding you to stir every four hours. You ask the last person who gave you homemade jelly as a gift if you can spend the afternoon at his house making jam in return for a few jars. There is already plenty of stuff in this world and the savvy minimalist both loans out her items when she can and borrows when needed.

Restaurants have it right: classic white plates are the perfect dinnerware. You can spend $100 on a meal or $10, but the food will be served on the same thing—a plain white dish. As you evaluate your dishes, be they fine china or everyday plates, consider streamlining to just what you use regularly, both in amount and type.

If you're going to keep fine china, use it. That might mean for take-out on a Friday night or for a leisurely Sunday brunch. Enjoy those beautiful dishes as often as you can. If the thought of anyone sawing up a steak on your fine dinner plates makes you nauseous, think about selling your china set. Anything “too good” to use has no purpose in a home.

Think carefully about how often you serve meals for more than six people. You may host Thanksgiving dinner every four years and need plates for twenty-four people, but it's not a weekly or even monthly occurrence. Unless you're hosting international dignitaries, it probably isn't a requirement that all the plates match or that the serving platters have a turkey motif on Thanksgiving. When, and if, you host a very large party, you can ask a friend to loan you dinnerware or even rent some for the occasion.

The extreme minimalist might only keep one bowl, plate, cup, and utensils per person in a household, requiring everyone to wash up after each meal. The moderate approach is to have enough dishware to fill your dishwasher. With the smallest bit of effort, you'll never be without a clean plate.

Your pantry should be stocked with fresh, regularly used staples. Think beans, peanut butter, and canned tomatoes. Jars of capers and marinated artichokes, and other one-off ingredients that you don't use in your weekly meals often take up space in your pantry until you realize, usually a few years too late, that they are well past their sell-by date. Only purchase specialty items if you plan to use them up within a few weeks.

The other big reason for cluttered shelves of canned goods: not shopping with a list. Haphazard grocery shopping, forgetting what's actually in your cupboards, and getting lured in by sales or new products result in a stuffed pantry that's difficult to navigate and use. As you bring home new items, older food gets pushed to the back. When you finally get around to cleaning your cupboards, you find you have multiple opened boxes of crackers or cereal that are all stale because they got lost on your deep and packed shelves. Having fewer items in your pantry will reduce food waste, make grocery shopping easier, and speed up meal preparation.

In the Life section of this book, you'll read more about the importance of shopping with a list and meal planning. These are the cornerstones of using minimalism to simplify meal preparation and will greatly reduce the time you spend cooking and grocery shopping. An added bonus: you'll save money enjoying healthy meals at home instead of ordering take-out or eating fast food.

Here's a test: Can you clearly see the back of your refrigerator? Can you also quickly clean your refrigerator? If your refrigerator has long-expired sauces lining the door shelves and leftovers growing mold, it's time to go minimalist with your perishable food.

First, why do you have so much food in your home? Unless you live in the country without easy access to a grocery store, most homes only need a week's worth of fresh groceries and a month's worth of canned items. Anything more and you are likely to lose more money in food waste than you save by buying in bulk. Yes, some people are excellent at buying mass quantities of food, preparing it, and storing it. But most of us have deep freezers full of freezer-burned meat and don't even get halfway through the jumbo bag of spinach before it turns slimy.

Europeans survive with very small refrigerators and shop locally most days for their fresh items. Their small refrigerators are easy to clean and do not allow for bulk purchases of perishable items. Some Europeans even live without freezers. The benefits to this particular less-is-more approach are less food waste and simple, healthy meals. Embrace the European way of keeping a bit less food in your home than you're used to, and you'll never have to spend two hours cleaning out your full refrigerator.

In the Life section, you'll learn more about simplifying your meal planning and ways to streamline food preparation. The foundation of your minimalist meals will be a kitchen that contains just the essentials for your favorite quick and healthy meals.

Plastic food containers are not your friends. That drawer full of mismatched lids and cracked sandwich containers isn't helping anyone. It's time to get that space back and never play the “which lid matches which container” game again. Keep just one set of outside-the-home food storage containers per person for lunches. Don't be scared. You already have a food storage solution: pots and dishware. If you're storing leftovers from dinner, let them cool down in the pan or pot, put the lid on, and store it in your refrigerator until you're ready to heat it up for your next meal. One of the secrets to a minimalist life is keeping things simple—that includes meal planning. If you have a serving of spaghetti Bolognese leftover, don't throw it in a container and push it to the back of your refrigerator for retrieval three weeks later when it's growing a new strain of antibiotic. Eat it for your next meal, even if that meal is breakfast. If you don't want to use the pot the meal was cooked in, put the leftover in a bowl or on a plate and cover it with a plate. Yes, this can take up a lot of space, but because you've removed the unneeded food from your refrigerator, you'll have lots of room to store just one plate of leftovers that will be consumed within forty-eight hours.

Remember, among the big benefits of a minimalist life are less distraction and less time and energy wasted on inconsequential choices. By limiting your meal choices, you'll save both time to do other things and mental energy making decisions that you can use for all those wonderful activities you want more of in your life.

Finally, the goal of your minimalist kitchen: a space for everything. If your kitchen allows, aim to have clutter-free counters. That means no breadbox, no stand mixer, no stacks of clean dishes, and no toaster sitting out. If you're hesitant, just temporarily give it a try. The soothing view of your clean kitchen, with just a flower on the windowsill, will win you over.

Is your bedroom a calming oasis? Do you easily fall asleep at night? Are the floors clear and is the bed made every morning? Or, like most people, is your bedroom a holding place for unfolded laundry, books you keep meaning to read but never have the time for, and anything that doesn't have a place in your living room?

Decluttering your bedroom should be one of the easiest tasks in your minimalist journey. All you really need in a bedroom is a place to sleep and spot to store your clothes. Unless you live in a studio apartment, you shouldn't be watching television or sewing or using bedroom space for anything other than its intended purpose.

That's right—remove the television from your bedroom. In fact, remove all electronic gadgets from your bedroom with the exception of an alarm clock. This means your computer, cell phone, tablet, or iPod should all live in another room, preferably your home office or a desk area, overnight. A key to a simple and productive life via minimalism is using your time wisely, and time spent sleeping soundly is an investment in your health and well-being. So, when it's time to sleep, it is best to remove all other distractions.

The television and other screens not only interfere with your biological ability to fall asleep, but they also become distractions during the night if you wake up. Having a light wakeful phase overnight is completely normal and resting calmly in the dark will probably let you return to sleep soon enough. However, if you awake and check your e-mail or turn on a television, you're more likely to have trouble falling back to sleep. For many of us, it's just too tempting to avoid electronics in the middle of the night if they're sitting there on a nightstand. The easiest solution is to save your willpower and simply take the temptation away. When you have an urge to check Twitter or watch television at two in the morning, it will be easily vanquished when you realize you'll have to get out of bed.

Bedrooms should be peaceful. They should be soothing, not stimulating, and décor should be streamlined. A beautiful bedside lamp, fresh walls in a neutral color, and a bed that you make every morning are enough. Resist having open storage, such as clothing racks or tall, crammed bookshelves. You ideally want to fall asleep without anything visible that will make you think of things you need to do. No errant papers reminding you of bills to pay, no open closets suggesting that you're behind in laundry or alerting you to the dozen items waiting to be picked up at the dry cleaner. Your bedroom should be a sanctuary that makes work and chores a distant thought.

Beyond the bed, this room will hold your wardrobe. Again, your wardrobe should easily fit behind closed closet doors and in dresser drawers. If it doesn't, if you've resorted to stacking T-shirts on any available surface and the only thing preventing serious disarray is that most of your clothes are waiting patiently in laundry baskets, you'll want to embrace a minimalist wardrobe.

Clothing truly deserves a section of its own because most of us have far more than we need. That's why one of the best areas to start your decluttering mission is your wardrobe. Closets can be black holes of money and time. It's so easy to pick up fast fashion and sale items and amass a closet full of pieces that don't suit your body shape or your lifestyle. Most of us wear 20 percent of our clothing 80 percent of the time. So why are you holding on to the jeans that never fit, the stretched-out sweater, and the dated little black dress that you haven't worn in ten years?

Fear. We're fearful that those pants might come back in style, or fit, or we'll eventually find the perfect top/belt/shoes to complete an outfit. The real truth, the one that will set you free to streamline your closet, is that the money you spent on all that clothing is already gone (unless an item still has tags and you kept the receipt). The 80 percent of your closet that you never wear is worth whatever you can get for it at a consignment shop or at a garage sale. So let it go.

If you want to recoup some cash, look to consignment stores or eBay to sell your unwanted items. If you don't think you can get a worthwhile amount selling it, your next step is to donate it. Clean clothing without any rips or stains can be donated to charitable organizations and some even provide tax receipts. If clothing isn't in good enough condition to donate, look for textile recycling drop-off points in your area.