My old bread maker sat in my cabinet for two years, and it left my house in four hours.
My sister gave it to me, so I felt bad about letting it go. (She gave it with love, and we did eat the bread.) I didn’t know where else it could go, so it stayed.
Then one Tuesday morning, I took one photo and posted it in our local Buy Nothing group. By that afternoon, it was gone. The woman who came for it had wanted one for months, but she couldn’t justify buying one new.
That got me looking through the rest of my cabinets this fall. I found a small slow cooker, an old hand mixer, an electric knife and a popcorn popper. None of them had been plugged in for years.
I had kept them all for the same reason. I figured nobody wanted them, so where would they go?
There is an answer for each one, even the broken ones. Let me show you what to do with old small appliances, so you can have that cabinet back.
Why These Little Machines Are So Hard to Let Go
Small appliances cost good money, and that’s part of it. They still work, or they might, so tossing them feels wrong. Some were gifts, and that makes it harder.
They’re also a bother to get rid of. You can’t just drop a slow cooker in the recycling bin, and a thrift store may not take it. So it goes back in the cabinet, and there it sits.
They take up a lot of room, too. My bread maker filled the same spot that now holds all my mixing bowls. (I was surprised how much room one machine took.)
If yours are out on the counter, I shared how I cleared mine in decluttering my kitchen countertops.