The donation box rode around in the back of the van for nine days before I actually dropped it off, which says something about how attached I was to what was inside, and something else about how often I clean out the van. In it: a bread machine, a spiralizer, a panini press, the last two pieces of our old nonstick set, and a stack of plastic containers whose lids went missing years ago.
That box was the end of a clean-out that's been going on, slowly, for about a year and a half. After more than ten years of cooking for a family, and six years before that cooking for strangers, our kitchen has mostly sorted itself out. Here's what I'd buy again tomorrow, what left, and what each one cost.
What I'd buy again tomorrow
- Lodge 12-inch cast-iron skillet, $24 in 2009. Bought on a line cook's paycheck and still part of most of our dinners. Seventeen years works out to about $1.41 a year.
- Victorinox Fibrox 8-inch chef's knife, about $40 in 2011 and about $55 now. Light, plain, holds an edge. I'd pay the $55 without blinking.
- Nordic Ware half-sheet pans, four of them at about $15 each. Fajitas, cookies, roasted vegetables, peaches frozen flat. They've warped a little and work exactly the same.
- Crock-Pot 7-quart, $45 in 2014. My office days are built around it. Twelve years in, it still runs every Tuesday.
- Instant Pot Duo 6-quart, $59 in 2018. I wrote about it last month. Beans, rice and eggs, four or five times a week.
- Ninja DualZone 8-quart air fryer, $139 on sale in May 2025. Two baskets means two foods at once, which with Eli at the table means one plain basket and one everything-else basket. It's the reason the oven can stay off from June through September.
- The big stainless stockpot, about 16 quarts, from my catering years. Chili for twelve, steaming tamales, blanching half a bushel of peaches.
- FoodSaver vacuum sealer, $89 last Black Friday. At seven weeks I'd only earned back about $14 of it. Between May's bulk ground beef and the brisket and peaches since, my spreadsheet says it paid for itself sometime this summer.
- The glass meal-prep containers with the gray and blue snap lids, a Costco set plus a few strays. I don't remember what the set cost, which tells you it was reasonable. Lunches, leftovers and every chopped onion on a Sunday.
Two more I didn't pay for and would: the Lodge enameled Dutch oven, a 2016 gift that handles the long tomato sauces the cast iron shouldn't, and the Thermapen Matt gave me for Christmas. That one was $99 on sale, and I'd buy it myself, though I'd wait for a sale too.
Glad to own, but I'd think twice at full price
The KitchenAid stand mixer was a wedding gift in 2013, and I'm grateful for it every December, when it mixes four batches of cookie dough in an afternoon. The rest of the year it comes out maybe twice a month, for rolls and whipped cream. If it died tomorrow, I'd think hard before paying full price for a new one. The Presto griddle ($40 in 2020) and the lever pecan cracker ($24 in 2021) are seasonal tools in the same way: the griddle for pancakes and grilled cheese, the cracker for about six weeks every November. Both have earned their money in our house. Neither is something I'd push on anyone else.
What left
- The bread machine, a 2013 wedding gift, used four times. Every loaf came out with a hole in the bottom from the paddle, and I make rolls in the mixer anyway.
- The spiralizer, about $25 in 2016, during a zucchini noodle phase. Used three times. Eli declared zucchini noodles "wet," which is fair.
- The panini press, about $35 in 2015. It made one sandwich at a time, which for five people meant twenty minutes of standing over it. The griddle makes five grilled cheeses at once.
- The 12-piece nonstick set we got when we married. I replaced it one piece at a time with cast iron and stainless as the pans wore out. The scratched ones went in the trash over the years. The last two still had good coating, so they went in the box.
- Our old 4-quart air fryer, which went to my mom when the Ninja arrived last year. Gary uses it more than she does, mostly for frozen fries, so it got the happiest retirement of anything on this list.
How something earns a place
The rule that keeps our kitchen from filling back up is borrowed from catering, where every inch of shelf had to earn its keep. Anything I haven't used in a year goes out to the metal shelves in the garage. If nobody misses it in six months, it leaves. The bread machine sat out there for a year and a half before I admitted nobody, including me, was ever going to miss it.
Eli, for the record, checked the box before it left to make sure the toaster wasn't in it. It wasn't. He still has plans for that toaster.
