I recently reorganized my utensil drawer in my kitchen. I love kitchen gadgets and it seems mine had multiplied while I wasn’t looking. Three pair of tongs. Twelve extra knives. An extra ice cream scoop. A nut cracker? (I have no clue the last time I needed a nut cracker.)

kitchen utensil drawer

Instead of trying to justify why I needed to keep all these nifty gadgets, I loaded them into an extra bin to incubate for a month. I kept the bin in my basement. If I was in my kitchen and suddenly needed a nut cracker, a quick trip down the stairs and I was back in business. I’d take the nut cracker out of the bin and back into the utensil drawer. Essentially, I had a month to figure out if I really needed any of these gadgets or not. Guess what? I didn’t make a single trip to the incubator. (Not even for the nutcracker as shocking as that may seen.) So, everything in the incubator is going straight to charity.

Give the incubator a try next time you’re on the fence about items you encounter in an organizing project. Just be sure to set a date and then, when the date comes, anything left in the incubator, goes!