Compromise

I like crepes. Who doesn't, really?

I also like cornbread, scrambled eggs, sausages... all of which could conceivably have their own pot, pan or double-boiler.

What I have instead is one well-seasoned, 10-inch cast-iron frying pan. Is it the best tool for any given job? Maybe not. But it is the Swiss Army knife of pans: pretty darn good for just about anything.

Also, it cost less than $10, new (I think it was part of a three-piece, $15 set).

Unnecessary but fun

Being a homeowner, I find myself in what must be a traditional trap of saving jars and other containers. Until a recent sweep of my storage area, I had a mountain of yogurt containers, peanut-butter jars, jelly jars, olive jars (martinis - yum!), you name it. Luckily, my city started taking a lot more plastics than it used to at curbside, so I recycled plenty about a month ago. I couldn't part with the PB & J containers, though.

The jelly jars (Bonne Maman, my favorite for raspberry preserves) turn out to be super everyday drinking glasses, and the peanut butter jars are handy storage containers for all kinds of things in my pantry (my pantry is probably just like yours: aka cupboard).

I don't think my cupboard contains too many items in their original packaging: Black beans, lentils, popcorn and chickpeas all hang around in PB jars, which is probably unnecessary, but makes me happy. I think that's important - having fun - especially if your pantry is as lavish as mine.

Always paring down

I think this is probably true of any part of your living space, but the premium on space in a cramped kitchen necessitates an occasional spring cleaning (even if it isn't spring).

For me, this usually just means rooting out a few old sets of napkins and haggling with myself over whether to keep all the coffee cups or get rid of a couple. And trying to part - once and for all - with the little-used Dutch oven. Maybe I'll turn it into a garden ornament.

Even if you haven't bought or received anything new and are sure the exercise will yield nothing to offload, I think it is still worth it. Maybe you'll realize you have some unused ingredients you want to make a dent in (I found a bunch of chickpea flour last night, for example), or maybe you'll realize that by reorganizing your spices you can save some valuable cupboard space, too.

I try to make a pass through the kitchen every two or three months. I also do so whenever I think I might be putting on my traveling shoes: It is always nicer to move with less, not more, stuff.

Pots and pans

When I moved into my cramped kitchen in 1999, I'd been living in much more spacious quarters, so I had a big collection of pots and pans.

• Soup pots? Small and large.
• Frying pans? Four or five - three sizes of cast iron, plus a Revereware pan and a medium Calphalon pan.
• A small saucepan
• A large saucepan
  
• A stovetop-mac-and-cheese size pot
• A Dutch oven
• An absurd plug-in electric frying pan
  

It took me a couple of years to whittle the collection down to the essentials, mostly because I was reluctant to Goodwill so many nice pans.

Now I have:

• One cast-iron frying pan (about 10 inches)
• One small saucepan (stovetop mac and cheese size)
• One large saucepan (mac and cheese for 10)
• Two large soup pots (about 10 quarts).
• That Dutch oven, be it ever so infrequently used.

The soup pots are identical and both contain large and small steaming baskets. I probably only *need* one, but if you're feeding 20-30 every so often, the flexibility is a big plus. As for the Dutch oven, well, they're expensive, so I'm loath to ditch it. I keep thinking I'll do a bean-hole supper some fall, too, in which case it will be wicked useful.