I have new cast iron pans. A mini cake pan and a muffin tin by Lodge, and an omurice pan by Iwachu (that might be too shallow for the use I want to put it to but I digress).

This is a wonderful thing — except we really don’t have the space to store all the new things. Particularly as cast iron isn’t something I like to stack. You could call it weight lifting when you heft up a griddle, a muffin tin, and the mini cake pan to get at the deep skillet underneath, but it’s just not that fun of an experience.

Also, as much as I complain that a lot of modern minimalism is based around wealth and privilege, it’s not a bad thing to have less things, as long as it suits the life that works best for you.

So, I’m going to try an experiment: I’m going to keep track of what pans, utensils, and ingredients I use most of on a regular basis and try to see if that will help me pare things down.

As it is, I already have some idea in my sieve-ish brain of what I do and don’t use. For example: I don’t really need both a computerized rice cooker and a Datung one-lever wonder. If push came to shove, I’d probably choose the Datung because it’s great for refreshing frozen/stale bread and I could also make rice in it.

I haven’t used the 8 inch cake pan in ages and our household currently struggles to finish off a six inch cake before Taiwan humidity and temperatures turn it into a potential biohazard, so that’s going into the donation pile.

I have a lovely Pyrex set that is sort of like a glass Dutch oven — it looks lovely and serving food in it is great, but I tend to use the pans that have handles more so it’s now holding a bunch of rock salt chunks and a bulb on a cord masquerading as a salt lamp. Doesn’t look too shabby, but my bias as the creator is showing.

I don’t know how frequently I’ll manage to do this and how long I’ll remember to try and keep it up…

Note that it’s not “how long I can keep it up” but “how long I’ll try to remember to try and keep it up”…

Most days I’m ready to be done done done by the end of the night; who wants to think about all that record-keeping in this stage of end stage chronic exhaustion….

But trying to be mindful is never a bad thing. So here we go.