The Case For Throwing Away Broken Kitchen Tools

As a professional organizer, I often find myself in the business of giving people permission. Permission to let go, permission to try a new strategy, permission to reclaim their space. Today, I want to give you a very specific kind of permission:

You can get rid of broken and damaged kitchen items.

Thats right! It’s totally ok to get rid of broke and damaged dishes, silverware, cups, kitchen tools, pots, pans, et cetera. You are totally allowed. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t make you wasteful.

There are three reasons I bet you haven’t thought about for getting rid of damaged items in your kitchen instead of just trying to soldier on with broken stuff.

1) If it’s broken, it may actually be dangerous to your health. When porous materials like wood develop cracks, food lodges in those cracks and that food loves to grow bacteria, which can make you sick. When fragile pieces break, the jagged edges can cut you. And when coated pans and utensils, like Teflo, start to disintegrate, those chemicals can get into your food. So, it’s actually bad for your health to keep using broken things!

2) Broken things aren’t appealing, and if your kitchen tools aren’t appealing, you won’t want to cook. Our brains are wired to make us attracted to things that look shiny and new. This instinct kept us safe for millenia, and even though it’s less relevant today, it absolutely has not gone away. If you have stuff in your kitchen that's not shiny and new, you won’t be attracted to it, which means you're going to not want to cook at all. If you have health goals that revolve around improving your dietary intake and cooking from home, you’re going to want to set yourself up for success - and that means getting rid of things that make you less likely to cook that healthy food!

3) There are no points awarded for suffering in this world. Toughing it out with broken stuff doesn’t make you a better person, and it doesn’t make any other part of your life better. I see a lot of people who say, well, I already have the broken stuff, so even if I don't love it, I should still just use it. My argument is that life is too short for a subpar experience, whether in your kitchen or elsewhere, and life is too short to feel guilty.

So go ahead! Prioritize your health and live free of guilt. Go ahead and replace those damaged and broken kitchen items!

LMW