If your countertops are cluttered, it’s time to rethink your small appliances. These tend to accumulate and then gather dust. Streamline your life by considering what you really do and don’t need. We all have a few gadgets that might seem unnecessary to others (lefse griddle, anyone?), so pick what you can’t bear to part with and then imagine how spacious your kitchen will be without the other stuff.
Blender
Unless you’re making daiquiris for your friends every weekend or whipping up smoothies for breakfast every morning, you probably don’t need a blender taking up counter space. If you have a food processor it can do much of the work a blender can, including making smoothies or pureeing soup. A hand-held immersion blender is also a great space-saving replacement. It stores inside a drawer or cabinet and can be used to make drinks in a pitcher or to puree right in a soup pot.
But let’s say you do have a good blender, one with a motor strong enough to make hummus or nut butters. In that case, hang on to the blender and skip the food processor.
Bread Machine
Assuming you are not regularly making all the bread your family is eating, a bread machine is a kitchen behemoth you can likely do without. There is no magic that a bread machine performs that you can’t do yourself in a mixing bowl, especially with the widespread popularity of no-knead bread techniques. And when you bake it yourself in a loaf pan it comes out in a normal shape without that weird hole in the middle.
Popcorn Popper
Air-popped popcorn is a healthy snack, but you can accomplish exactly the same thing in a paper bag in the microwave while saving yourself a lot of space (and without the temptation to melt butter in the tray on top). Don’t have a microwave? You can pop popcorn on the stove in a stockpot.
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