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Last month, we upgraded our kitchen. (No, that’s not my kitchen in the photo. I’m not that good at staging. This is a financial blog, not a lifestyle blog.) After living in our house for more than five years, we had grown tired of our dark cabinets and dark countertops. We wanted to lighten things up. So we hired a contractor to paint our cabinets and install new countertops and a backsplash in much lighter and brighter tones.

For him to do it though, we had to empty out our entire kitchen first. And oh my gosh. Until that moment, I did not realize how much stuff our kitchen held.

I owned a lot of kitchen stuff.

And, here’s the kicker,

I hate stuff.

Let me clarify, I’m not a pack rat, quite the opposite actually. I don’t like clutter and therefore, I try to buy things that serve a purpose. I’m not one for knick-knacks or keeping things around that aren’t being used regularly. Yet somehow we had collected and accumulated enough kitchen things that they filled up my an entire living room and most of my dining room when we had to empty our all of our cupboards and drawers. That’s almost two full rooms of kitchen stuff. 

Seeing that, I was ashamed at how much stuff we owned. It was ridiculous. How did we let this happen? And we had been fighting with our kitchen for a while. Because it was overflowing with stuff, nothing was organized. We kept jamming things into any space we could find thinking we’d get around to organizing it someday. Thankfully, hiring our contractor made someday happen.

I realized that despite my “practical nature”, so much of what we had in our kitchen was unnecessary.

So we got rid of it.

I kid you not, we donated close to a van full of kitchen supplies to our local Goodwill, and it felt so freaking good – one, to know that it was out of my house, and two, because it will hopefully go to someone else who needs it more than we do.

I think about how hard my husband and I work (luckily at our passions), I look at what we own, and how insignificant these possessions are in the grand scheme of life. We don’t need things to be happy. And we certainly don’t need a whole kitchen full of gadgets to make us happy.

So from now on, I’m vowing to buy and accumulate less. Before some new gadget or utensil goes into our kitchen, we’re taking stock of what we already have and taking something out before anything new goes in.

I truly believe “less is more” and we don’t need any more than we already have.