I just brought 4 boxes of such acquisitions to GoodWill. I pared my kitchen down to what I use and not a collection of things I simply like. Kept that waffle maker. Ditched the George Foreman grill.

How did I end up with 5 medium size knives that have no use at all?

Moving to a smaller place after 33 years in the same place helped me purge, but sometimes I go "Did I get rid of ****"? Then I go rooting through the basement. I do have to be very careful about how many gadgets I have because of so little storage (It's probably a good thing!)

I have a lot of tools. They don't take up very much space and they're wonderfully useful. The waffle maker, however, and the ricer, are really big! And don't get used often. However, they're so necessary for waffles and potatoes. The waffle maker was a gift many years ago. The ricer is the GW CF approved big honkin' gym equipment version that is so much better than all others, especially the cylinder shaped ones.

I also have the CF approved Paderno spiralizer, which is pretty compact and thoroughly excellent. It does udon sized cuts (perfect for zucchini salad with lemon juice and poppy seeds), and corkscrew ribbons, which makes a total treat of watermelon radishes. Plus the usual suspects. The newer models have even more cutting options. It's super easy to use and clean and becomes its own box.

Dave, do you have a ball whisk?

I can't believe I don't own a 'big honking' ricer. I did like my spiralizer the day it arrived a couple years ago, 😂. Maybe I'll give it another spin today.

I have that big honkin' ricer too and it is a VERY useful tool and I've bought it as a gift for cook friends.

For potatoes and also squeezing water from vegetables, mainly zucchini, it's excellent.

And, funny, i have a new spiralizer, a gift from years ago, and I've never opened it :-)

Not sure it is really a gadget, but I must confess that this is arriving today:

Bell Jigger

I guess I am one of those keeping the alcohol industry afloat!

A few years ago I bought a cheese grater/slicer that was 3 parts - base, cylinder and handle. I used it maybe 1/2 dozen times and the last time, as I cranked, the handle tightened down on the cylinder to where I couldn't get it loose. Neither could DH. He ended up holding the cylinder with 2 pairs of pliers while I tugged with all my might on the handle. Finally got it apart but the cylinder is no longer cylindrical. It sits in the back of a drawer. Not sure why I even kept it. Guess it's time to do some purging!

I wish I didn't have to pare down, but I do . . . I used to have a basement to store the once and a while use items, the stairs were right off the kitchen. No more, sigh. My cooking has had to similarly pare down. Easy, few tools and fast. It's so boring!

While we're on gadgets, just wondering... I have a big salad spinner, great for large batches of greens and stuff. But when I have just a small handful of herbs or just enough lettuce for a sandwich that's more than I need. Does anyone know if someone even makes a mini-spinner? I was going to do an internet search but thought I'd check here first.

Edie, at that point, I usually just blot with a tea towel. But after I spin, I also lay out leaves on a veg drying mat unless they're going into something wet like soup. I've seen half sized, but not smaller. OTOH, the less you put in the spinner, the dryer it gets, so why not just throw your handful in?

plllog, I've got basil leaves drying on a paper towel right now, but they're not getting as dry as I'd like, since I'm going to use them in a grilled cheese sandwich. That led me to start wondering about a mini-spinner! Hmmm... I might end up on Shark Tank yet LOL!!!

Oh dear, we are enabling each other....

Now I need a mini-spinner.

OMG! There IS a mini spinner and a huge one, too.

my head is ... maxi spinning.

I've seen mini spinners at thrift stores.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0086UR0SG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_GhBsFbQRVGV5A

Not as small as I would like but better than the contortions I have to go through to get the big one out.

I have a mini spinner. Easily fits in the fridge for herb and micro-green storage.

I have a medium spinner which I very rarely use....I prefer to put my greens in a tea towel and go outside and whirl it around.
When I was without power because of the derecho that cut a swath through Iowa 3 weeks ago, I spent a week at my daughter's and I was amazed at what she has amassed! she has a big kitchen but....holy cow! On one "beverage center" there sit 3 coffee makers...a Kureg...an espresso maker and something that makes regular coffee and espresso. Then there is the toaster, food processor, juicer, air fryer, instapot, crock pot and who knows what else back in the corner appliance garage.
My current "how did i ever live without it" thing is a Danish dough whisk. Years ago I bought at an auction, the contents of a gadget drawer of a very good cook. In it were such things as a dough scoop a Cracker-Jack nut cracker and various other hullers and cutters etc....including one thing I still don't know what it's for!

I bought a new salad spinner a while ago, it's a big one. I didn't think of looking for a smaller one, and truth to tell, I seldom think of it, so seldom use it. I have to correct that thinking.

My Danish dough hook finally stopped staying inside the wooden handle, it would pop out and it was a real pia trying to get it back in the holes again. I used it for mixing my bread dough, now it's a wooden spoon.

I love your conversation with your wife, Dave! I also bought a waffle iron last year, had the urge for waffles one morning, and just had to get one! It's horizontal, but you flip it. I've read that the vertical ones are hard to pour dough in, if it's too thick.

Years ago I saw a double-masher and thought that would be so perfect for mashed potatoes! In theory it is, but only when making large quantities of mashed, so it has sat, unused (after 1 try) in the drawer of the stove. Tried selling it online a few times, but no buyer

I have downsized my kitchen equipment but not one bit of my cooking has diminished because of it. I absolutely love my simple kitchen, and, yes I do have a waffle maker. I use it a lot. I make up a small number of waffles and keep them in the fridge. I heat them up in a hot cast iron skillet. It takes only a very few minutes to do so.

At my daughters house every inch of countertop space is filled up with something and the cabinets are full of usless stuff also. I absolutely hate having to do anything at all in that kitchen. Juggling for counter space is exhausting and it takes twice as long as it should to put anything away because everything is a juggling act. It does not have to be like that. It just makes the most simple things so difficult to accomplish. What a lot of wasted effort!

Love my simple life! I make wonderful meals and totally enjoy cooking.

I am somewhere in the middle. I love a gadget but will not buy it unless it comes in pink,or some sort of charming shape that appeals to me,like my snowflake or pumpkin or heart shaped waffle maker. So it keeps me somewhat in check. So far I have:

A kitchenaid stand mixer

A Dash air fryer

An instant pot (the gadget did not come in pink, but luckily there are loads of etsy shops that sell wraps for them. If i could not make it pink, i likely would not have bought it)

A toaster

A mini toaster oven

A cuisinart blender that came with a standard blender thing and individual blender cups. Very handy for milkshake making.

A cuisinart stick blender

A dash mini waffle maker.

A cuisinart mini chop 3 cup food processor

A ninja blender( great for blending up waffle mix for the above mentioned waffle maker)

All in pink. I use them all regularly. These are just my electric gadgets. If I start listing ALL my pink kitchen fiddle faddle I'll be here all night....

My salad spinner is pink too,but I can't recall using it very much.....

I've been purging stuff too. Problem with me is that since I do have the storage space, I've let stuff just accumulate in deeper storage mode instead of just getting rid of it once I realized I wouldn't be using it. Random odd things, bakeware that isn't really useable for my kitchen since I don't specialty bake stuff. A handful of small appliances and gadgets that almost to never get used. Some bigger party/holiday stuff that isn't needed since we don't have bigger events like that anymore. A couple crockpots that I don't use anymore. A bunch of glassware and some dinnerware that is no longer needed. It's all just wasting storage space I could be using more effectively for other. A lot of it is worth donating, a handful of it isn't.

Some of it is needing room for newer stuff. Like a gifted instant pot and sous vide stick last year is replacing a couple of the crockpots, though I'm still keeping a couple of crockpots I do use regularly. Some of it is needing that deeper storage space to get some stuff out of the active storage areas- like I don't really need to keep all 12 settings of crystal in the active storage, and need space in deeper storage for half of it. And a lot of it is that I've been doing a lot of cooking and streamlining of the kitchen in other ways, it's just time to do it with the stored stuff too.

I also purged my cookbook collection, another long overdue thing. Culled a paper shopping bag full of them off the shelves. Again, just stuff I don't use favor of books I do use more often. And I do have some newer cookbooks, so that bookshelf was growing overstuffed and it was time.

There are NEVER get it items in my get rid of stuff... one of those As seen on TV! items, a segmented brownie/meatloaf sort of pan. Fairly useless, and a royal pain to grease up to use and also to clean up after. Because even with good greasing stuff didn't cook right/evenly. I was gifted with a pair of them, and never got the first one to work nice enough to bother opening the other box. A bromeladed glass teapot/warmer set that was so very fragile and we drink tea by the cup, not kept warm in a pot.. And a vintage orange grater thing with changeable disks that seemed like a good idea but.. just no. And a terrible french fry cutter press thing.

I got rid of one of two electric knives. I never use one but kept the newer of the two for some reason.

My father had an electric knife - he used it to slice bone in ham and did a good job with it. My parents also used it to slice homemade bread for sandwiches. I've never had one. The last time I saw an electric knife used was at a neighborhood Thanksgiving dinner many years ago. The host used it to basically shred the turkey - a very disappointing bird...

I have a friend who would bring his electric knife fishing on the big fishing trips to Canada ... when we got to the cleaning station, he just whizzed through the stringers ... he was really good at it.

I will give that electric knife to my daughter then. She does a lot of crafts.

bees needs, one thing that I have become completely weary of is deep storage. I know that you say that you have lots of storage.

Storage areas were the very first to be excavated in my downsizing. My thinking is that, if it never sees the light of day, it needs to go. I haven't regretted clearing out the things in the back of the house.

When we moved my mom out of her house I found a lot of big Tupperware that had sat in the back of a cabinet so long that it had turned yellow. I don't let things like that happen.

Those "as seen on TV" items are what I call "weenie roasters" . They are basically useless and cheap stuff that was never useful or needed at all. There really were weenie roasters sold. Depending on your age, you may remember them. They were a little electric cylinder cooker that you put a weenie in and in about half an hour had a roasted weenie. That is right up there with the iced tea maker, which is just a bigger weenie roaster.

So much of what is promised in those ads just ends up as nothing more than pure landfill. They are laughable, at best.

I would like to have a mandolin, but keep seeing things more on par with what you have described, things that are not well made and have a lot of negatives. So, I just don't buy any one at all. That has become my default position, to just NOT buy anything.

I used to have an iced tea maker and used it every other day to fill a pitcher of iced tea for myself. I loved that thing. It went for years and years before it died. I would have bought another but cold brew iced tea bags came out and were easier to use.

Now and then I get the urge to get another cabinet or more shelves for kitchen storage and that's when the red light goes off in my head that I am accumulating too much stuff. I sort of scold myself that there are two people living in the house with a big kitchen, big fridge, upright freezer, a back bar and a coffee bar. HOW much stuff do we need? And really, that much stuff or that much food is just more work, isn't it?

Dallasannie, you might try a Kyocera paddle mandoline. It's great for smallish jobs, fits easily in a utensil drawer, goes in the DW, and is no fuss or bother. I use mine all the time. I have a very fancy de Buyer angled v-slice mandoline which lives in its own briefcase in the cupboard over an oven, takes a lot of counter space to use, has infinite adjustment and will do thicker slices, has a couple of julienne blades, a long pusher, and is a pain to clean. Worth it for big jobs, but now that I have a food processor with an adjustable thickness slicing blade which actually works well, and which also chops, I mostly use it for gigantic vegetable displays for large parties, or similar desires for uniformity and perfection beyond what I can do with a knife or lessor device. Not on the get rid of it list, but only a once or twice per year thing. The paddle mandoline makes lovely chips and salad slices.

We renovated our kitchen last year and I got rid of a lot of seldom used gadgets. In the new kitchen I have storage space for things like the Zo bread machine, mandoline and the Food Saver but not enough storage for every gadget. I still have 2 containers of gadgets in storage to go through. I do agree that without certain gadgets, I tend to be less inclined to be creative in my cooking so it is a tradeoff. Sad part is I will still buy a gadget if I think I can use it. My most recent purchase was a large collapsible salad spinner. I love the fact it take up so little room.

I need to move. That is the best way to purge kitchen crack. (not a typo)

I stopped in a store called HomeGoods a few years ago. I had heard of it. Right next to my favorite grocery. (now closed for good). Yeah, I know, always a treasure to be found. It is the ten items under five dollars total junk that get me.

Took DH once and he was shocked. "this store is great!". "no it isn't". lol........... #1, note the check-out line. One cashier, 40 in line, about face, walk out.

He was micro planning something and felt so bad that the handle broke off......... " HomeGoods sweets".

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