Emptying a kitchen before a move

A kitchen is the last room anybody packs and the first one that has to be empty. There's food in it, and food can't sit in boxes for a month. Work the room in this order and you won't be hauling a freezer full of thawing food out at midnight.

Start with the food, not the dishes

Pull everything out of the pantry and put it on the counter. Anything opened, expired, or in a torn package goes in the trash bag. Sealed and in-date goes in a box for the food bank, but call first, because the rules vary by place and a lot of them won't take glass jars or anything past its date.

The freezer is the trap. It has to be emptied and unplugged a day before you hand over the keys, with the door propped open, or it grows mold in a closed-up house. Plan the last week of meals around whatever is in there.

The spice rack is not worth moving

Spices lose their punch and jars leak in a box. Smell the ones you're unsure about. Keep the ones you bought this year if you're actually moving into a kitchen, and let the rest go.

Same with condiments, oils and baking supplies. Half a bottle of anything isn't worth the packing tape. If you're moving across town and the bottle is nearly full, hand it to a neighbor that day instead of boxing it.

Open the drawers people forget

• The drawer under the oven
• The top of the fridge and the cabinet above it
• Under the sink, including the bucket of cleaning products
• The junk drawer, which is twenty minutes of your life
• The back row of the pantry, behind the good stuff
• The cabinet where the platters live

Then the cabinets, one shelf at a time

Do one shelf, carry the whole shelf to the table, and decide there. Standing in front of an open cabinet with a trash bag in your hand is how people stall out. Lids without containers, containers without lids, the chip-and-dip set from a wedding, the fourth mixing bowl — those go in the donate box without a second look.

Keep what matches and what you actually used this year. A kitchen you're leaving doesn't need a set of eight of anything.

What actually sells out of a kitchen

Cast iron, a stand mixer, good knives, copper pots, a pressure canner, and complete sets of anything with a name on the bottom. Those sell. Chipped mugs, mismatched flatware, plastic storage containers and a bread machine from 2004 do not, and listing them costs more in time than they're worth.

Mason jars sell in lots, and so do canning rings if they aren't rusty. Bundle the small stuff into one box and price the box.

Pack it so it survives the trip

Plates go on edge, not flat, with paper between them. Glasses get packed inside socks or towels. Heavy things go in small boxes, because a big box of cast iron is a box nobody can lift, and the person helping you will remember it.

Label every box on the top and on one side, and write KITCHEN in big letters. Tape the bottom of every box twice. Pack the kettle and one pan last so you can eat before the kitchen is set up again.

The thing people get wrong is leaving food behind in a house that's about to be shown or handed back. A bag of potatoes in a closed cabinet announces itself within a week. Do a final walk-through with every cabinet open and the fridge empty, and check the door shelves.