When to toss old bakeware, utensils, and other kitchen accessories?

June 22, 2021 7:27 PM

I've been working on de-cluttering and organizing my mother's kitchen. There are all kinds of bakeware, utensils and other accessories to sort through that's been acquired over the last 40+ years. What is the rule of thumb when it comes to keeping and tossing this type of stuff?

I know that any non-stick pans with scratches, a rusty egg-beater, etc. should be tossed... but what else should I be keeping in mind?

I'm not sure if I've been using the right search terms, but I can't find much advice online that goes more into depth than what I've already suspected. I'm not in a hurry to get rid of things, because there are quite a few pieces of things in her kitchen that I'd probably just keep for myself if I could (I secretly love CorningWare!). So I'm mostly working on figuring out what is *actual* junk/unsafe to use, and then going from there!

For example, there are a few pieces of aluminum bakeware (loaf pan, cake pan, muffin tin, etc.) and they look oxidized and I don't know if they should be kept? There are also a few loaf pans and cookie sheets, for example, that you can tell have just been "well used." Tossing/replacing them isn't a big deal, but I'm not sure if there's no harm to keep them. But when is it time to toss stuff?

I assume that glass bakeware and stuff like CorningWare (glass-ceramic) be kept pretty much forever, unless there are chips or cracks.

What should I be tossing from an old kitchen and what should we keep?

posted by VirginiaPlain to Food & Drink (17 answers total)

If you haven't used it at all in the past 5 years, especially if the reason is its sketchy appearance, I'd consider tossing.

Corningwear is a treasure though. I believe they don't even make true Pyrex any more.
posted by heatherlogan at 7:37 PM on June 22, 2021 [8 favorites]

Post them all for free on Craigslist and let someone else decide what's worth keeping.
posted by aniola at 7:53 PM on June 22, 2021 [6 favorites]

there's no rule. Older stuff was generally made to last. In many cases it's better than what you can get now. You just go by utility. Warped cookie sheets for instance, you can throw out. (Although an old cookie sheet can be a useful thing! What else are you going to put under a baking sweet potato to catch its carbonizing sugar drips?!)

Oxidized pans aren't dangerous, just ugly. Peeling nonstick-coated stuff needs to be tossed though, as you noted.

The question is just how you cook and what you're likely to use. (Although you may decide that some things with value still aren't useful to you; in that case, it may be worth Craigslisting or garage sale-ing rather than tossing.)
posted by fingersandtoes at 7:55 PM on June 22, 2021 [10 favorites]

Maybe consider getting rid of old, old plastic.
posted by cleverevans at 7:56 PM on June 22, 2021 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: aniola -- I suppose I should have added that I'm just organizing/sorting for the sake of it and to figure out what we have. I'm not planning on donating or giving anything away just yet.
posted by VirginiaPlain at 7:58 PM on June 22, 2021

IMHO, YMMV...

Cast iron: always save
Corningware: always save
Pyrex: always save, you can worry if it's "real" or not later on
Copper: always save
Anything that says "Corning" (like that Visions stuff, or Corelle, even though the brands are now owned elsewhere): always save
Carbon steel pans: always save
Any metal object that appears in good condition regardless of material and which is pre-1970: save

Any metal object that doesn't have teflon and is post-1970: save to potentially sell/trade/give away
Any ceramic object that doesn't have a visible crack/chip: save to potentially sell/trade/give away
Any glass object: save to potentially sell/trade/give away
Anything plastic that appears pristine: save to potentially sell/trade/give away

Anything with teflon: toss/recycle
Anything obviously warped: toss/recycle
Any ceramic object with a crack: toss/recycle
Any glass object with a crack: toss/recycle
Anything extensively rusted that isn't cast iron or carbon steel cookware: toss/recycle
Anything plastic that's damaged: toss/recycle

"Well used" is a concept that should be discarded. Is it warped? Then toss. If not, Bon Ami will fix it. All of the foregoing assumes you're not prepared to sit on eBay and price things out. For example, some people will pay noticeable dollars for glass juicers, even though in the above I say random glass is to be sold/traded/given away.

(and I'm a little paranoid re: cracks because I've had twice had glassware explode in my face when I tried to pick it up, thanks to a crack I hadn't seen. Fortunately I still have my sight, but frankly that was a close thing, so nowadays if I think it might explode and blind me I toss it regardless of whether it can actually explode and blind me.)
posted by aramaic at 8:15 PM on June 22, 2021 [52 favorites]

Anything too mysterious to identify: post to Ask Metafilter for the diversion of your Internet friends.
posted by amtho at 8:30 PM on June 22, 2021 [24 favorites]

If you've got any Flint Stainless utensils, keep 'em for your use. We've got one from ms scruss's grandmother that she got as a wedding present. It still looks new.
posted by scruss at 8:44 PM on June 22, 2021

Anything plastic which you are not positively certain is BPA-free should be tossed. Also if you have one of the Corningware pitchers or percolators with the attached handle, those were recalled in the 70's because the handles fail when hot, at random (but they're still floating around out there.)
posted by blnkfrnk at 8:50 PM on June 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

Oxidized aluminum is mostly fine, but I'd avoid cooking acidic foods in it. I have no clue if it's dangerous or not but it'd taste metallic so that's bad. Dull baking sheets actually do better than shiny ones for some things!

You can also even out an uneven or rusty surface with steel wool sometimes. Baking soda and kosher salt are nice foodsafe abrasives to help it along.
posted by ikea_femme at 9:16 PM on June 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

Unless the aluminum cookie sheet is shaped warped so much that it could hold water, I'd keep it. My mother has one that is more than 50 years old, and I swear it's magic. It's just the right thickness/composition/whatever that it turns out perfect cookies. You wouldn't believe how many cookie sheets I've bought over the years trying to duplicate the cooking ability of that thin, warped sheet--and that includes "professional" grade ones from the restaurant supply store. None of them work as well, and if I really need to make sure my cookies turn out properly, that's the pan I borrow.
posted by sardonyx at 9:33 PM on June 22, 2021 [6 favorites]

When you're weeding out, usually the best approach is to decide what you *do* want. Make a list of what would ideally be in the kitchen cupboards because you need and will use them, and then pare down to that.
posted by orange swan at 5:11 AM on June 23, 2021 [2 favorites]

I;m sure everyone knows this, but in the name of safety I'll just leave this here:

Pyrex/Corning ware: if there are scratches, toss it. I learned the hard way, having a pyrex baking dish explode in the oven.
posted by james33 at 5:42 AM on June 23, 2021 [2 favorites]

If you are saving it for your own use, there are many good ideas upthread. If you are considering donating the items to a thrift store, just toss the rusty and broken stuff and donate the rest. I love some vintage kitchen tools, but I also do lots of different types of crafting and often look for old kitchen things to repurpose. Examples: old crock pots for jewelry pickle bath, old cake pans to hold vermiculite for cooling enamel beads, old casseroles/pans to use for dyeing paper, etc.
posted by sarajane at 11:31 AM on June 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

This is a hard question IMO, because I am of the 'one never knows'-school of kitchenware. And today, while studying something completely different, I stumbled over this list of what every orderly, middle class kitchen needs from 1888 (this is both jokey and serious, because it is pretty much exactly what I have accumulated over the years because it made sense and I feel validated):

One stockpot
One pot for making soup
One smaller pot for making dairy-based foods
One potato pot
One vegetable pot
One fish kettle
Six different other pots
Enough lids for all the pots
Two sauté pans
Two frying pans
One pan for æbleskiver
Two large baking pans
One omelet pan
One pan for deep frying with its basket
Two molds for fish jellies etc.
Two pie tins
Two molds for making ice cream
Two molds for making fruit jellies
One sieve for making purees
Two sieves for soup
Three sieves for sauces
One colander
Two graters
One set of morter and pestle
One big chopping board
One meat hammer
One knife for cutlets
One axe
Six different other kitchen knives
One pancake turner
One chopping knife (probably one of those round things called a mezzaluna in Italian)
One "knife" for opening jars (what we would call a tin-opener)
One Chartreuse knife
One tin shaped like a column
One meat grinder
One iron for crustades
Two drills for root vegetables
Six needles for meat
Two needles for sewing with meat string
One ladle for skimming a stock or soup
Two dishes for gratin (what Americans would call casserole dishes)
Twelve small dishes for single servings of gratins
One gratin iron
Six wooden spoons
Two wooden knives for butter
Three ordinary cutting boards
One board for making cake
One rolling pin
One tin for keeping cookies in
Three whisks
One kitchen weight
And (as the author writes) obviously lots of measures, mixing bowls, and containers for foodstuffs like sugar and flour etc.

This is a kitchen where several people work together to prepare meals sometimes, as is mine, hence the many knives and whisks. And the author has a good point about her rather large amount of pots and pans: it's a waste of time to scrub them endlessly, much better to let them soak till everything loosens up.
If you never have a big holiday gathering, then you don't even need half of all this, and I have helped both my grandmother and my mother reduce their kitchens considerably when they became too old to cook for larger gatherings. For both of them, it meant a loss of identity and great sadness, even anger. But the circumstances were very different. My mother has been almost blind for many years, and stopped giving parties decades ago. When she turned 70 in 2009, the party was at my house, and I cooked. Later she gave up on climbing the stairs to my apartment, and celebrated stuff at restaurants. So the need for all her kitchen stuff was mostly imagined. The reason she had to move to a nursing home was that she kept on setting her kitchen on fire, and I felt I had to get rid of most of her cooking stuff so she couldn't just keep doing that in the new home. It helped her emotionally that my nephew took a good part of it.
My grandmother kept cooking for family till she was in her late 80's, and even after that, we would gather and cook at her house, with her directing the progress. It meant a lot to her that we were using what she felt was the right cookware. So when she moved to an apartment that was more suitable for a wheelchair user, we brought along most of her favorite stuff, much more than she would need. But still we got rid of many boxes of weird things, often never used and still in the boxes.
When she was dying, she asked me almost every day to cook her a chicken soup, even though she couldn't eat it. She loved the smell in the kitchen. And the very last night, when everyone came to say goodbye, I cooked an oxtail soup, another favorite of hers, so people could have a comforting meal, and her last breath could be of something good. And a lot of the kitchenware was in use for that last time.
posted by mumimor at 2:03 PM on June 23, 2021 [2 favorites]

Aluminum is pretty easy to clean and I've converted to aluminum cookie sheets.
I had a newish potato masher that did a crappy job, and now have a vintage one that works well, so test single-purpose items if you can.
My sister snagged the brass corkscrew from my parents' house; it has patina for looks and works so well.
I wish I'd snagged the very sharp grapefruit spoons.
Some old knives are carbon, non-stainless, steel, and they sharpen really well. They darken and stain, which does not affect the fact that they cut very well.
My Mom gave me her old graters and they work beautifully.
She also gave me her cast iron pans and they'll be listed in my will. Some old cast iron has a machine-spun surface that is nearly as non-stick as teflon. Still sorry I gave the pans I found at thrift shops to my kid, who left them behind somewhere.
I don't use teflon, so I use metal spatulas, which are more effective and pleasant to use than plastic. I buy nice old kitchen implements with wood handles because they feel nicer. No wood handles go in the dishwasher.

I don't cook in aluminum pots, but steel cookie sheets are such a nuisance. Corrosion on aluminum looks white. If it's dark brown, it's baked on crud.

re-sale value
Some people buy old glass storage containers with glass lids, these are usually rectangular.
Lots of decorated white/milk glass bowls and casseroles are collectible.
posted by theora55 at 6:57 PM on June 23, 2021

I have two "non-stick" pans
An AllClad wok and a la Creuset grill pan
Properly used.
Must I argue against their disposal?
posted by ahimsakid at 6:03 PM on February 4, 2022