Organize This!
Posted: September 24, 2007 at 11:16 am by pannHappy Monday morning, everyone!
Like Swistle, I’m finding that a hot cup of coffee sure does wonders. I wouldn’t be so tired this morning if I had not foolishly stayed up so late last night. But D and I are on this getting-organized kick, and de-cluttering can be kind of fun once you get past the first painful few items that you are so sure you’re going to want again before the week is out.
Last night, when I entered the kitchen at 10:00 PM to get together the lunches (for the girls, and for D), I suddenly noticed that there were WAY more spices than I thought I’d EVER use. D is reading this snarky book on getting organized which basically argues that you should throw out clutter that you don’t use and aren’t likely to use. He’s read out loud to me the passages that he’s found to be good advice, but also to have this incredible snide tone about the things that clutter from having too many hobbies and too many projects.
I admit I’m guilty of having a lot of projects going at all times. It’s part of being a creative person; doing things with my hands and watching things change, grow, take shape is a part of who I am. If I didn’t seek out many forms of artistic and creative expression, I think I’d explode, or maybe just slowly melt into a sad little puddle on the floor.
So it is that I have a pile of clothes to mend, a quilt to finish, a large fabric stash for the day when I learn to make children’s clothes, a set of watercolor paints and paper at hand, a big box of scrapbooking materials, piles of photos, stockpiles of seeds for planting next season, heaps of books and enough rennet and citric acid to make 25 pounds of mozzarella or ricotta. Finally, and significant to the point of this caffeine-powered post, a ridiculous collection of spices. Weird shit that I probably won’t ever have cause to use.
It was to this collection that I turned my de-cluttering eye last night. I even got rid of two out of the three spice racks that were in my kitchen, both on the wall and the counter. It was funny making little bargains with myself: I chose the smallest spice rack and agreed to limit my spice containers to what would fit in it: about a dozen different little glass jars with various herbs and seeds. A few more that I couldn’t bear to part with were neatly filed away in the cupboard (thanks D, for the little plastic organization unit!). And the rest? I dumped donated twenty different spice containers in a rotating spice rack to the kitchen in my daughter’s school. I hope it will be useful in some cooking project for the school, because I feel a little guilty for transferring clutter from my kitchen to the school!
Posted in Books, Family Life, Food, Gardening, Organization, Personal | 
5 Comments »
September 24th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
Good job! Decluttering is fun!
If you don’t know about this site already, I highly recommend subscribing to the RSS feed from unclutter.com.
http://unclutterer.com/
I love to throw, donate, throw, donate and throw some more! I do – I get high from it! But the spice rack would be painful for me to deal with, but it desperately needs attention. I’ll let you know if I have the will power to tackle it tonight after work!
Oh – and I just recently started making my own paneer cheese (boil milk and add lemon juice, separate the curd, drain and compress). I don’t have the nerve yet to dive into anything requiring rennet. Any advice if I decide to take the plunge?
September 24th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Decluttering is FUN if you’re good at it. I get so overwhelmed so easily. Can I rent you two for a weekend? Errr, maybe a week?
September 24th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Artemesia: I found that using a kit made me feel a lot more comfortable trying making Mozzarella for the first time. I got it from cheesemaking.com and it was not too hard, and we love fresh mozzarella. The hard thing about making your own cheese for me is measuring correctly. Temperature matters, as does the quality of the rennet. Freshness of the milk, too. It is only slightly cheaper for me to make mozzarella than to just buy it.
WhatWorks: I get overwhelmed too. VERY. I think it’s essential to limit yourself to one small area at a time. For example, I attacked just the spices. My next trouble area might be all the junk on the top of the microwave (should I just throw it all out?!) D is the organized one of the two of us, even though it comes more naturally to me than to him: he has worked on it and cultivated his organization. Anyone can… you just need support.
September 24th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
The virtue of a small house is that it forces us to get rid of crap.
I can’t beleive you make your own cheese, though that does explain the cheese ads.
September 25th, 2007 at 8:25 am
I am a BOTTOMLESS PIT for clutter talk right now, and I hope you will post about your progress AGAIN AND AGAIN.
One thing I find semi-useful is thinking “Does owning this item PLEASE me, or does owning this item OPPRESS me?” It doesn’t always work, though: my grandma’s china kind of oppresses me, but I can’t see pitching it, at least not yet.