Cardboard Free Zone!

Tonight I finally got the rest of the kitchen entirely unpacked, scrubbed and settled. I'm sure I'll move things around several times still as I try to figure out where things go. But it feels SOOO good to be free from boxes in at least a few rooms now. The basement and my office upstairs are still a horrible catastrophe of cardboard. But at least our main living areas are clear now.

Not only is the place starting to look a lot better as I get more unpacked, it's SAFER to know where things are. The week we moved in I had a near disaster.

After a long day of hauling things up and down stairs we were tired and hungry. Somehow the box marked "Pans" got put someplace other than where it should have so it took half of forever to find stuff to cook with. FINALLY I was able to piece together some stuff and started cooking jambalaya. It smelled so yummy and I was REALLY hungry!

However, cooking here is very different from cooking at the former place. At my old house I had a glass top stove that regulated heat so it was almost impossible to burn things. At this house we have just a standard electric stove that heats up FAST and stays hot. So even though I didn't have the stove turned up all that high, the rice was starting to scorch to the bottom of the pan. I looked over at the chair next to the stove where the box with all the spices and syrups and other stuff that had been in the cupboard next to the stove in the old house was sitting. I saw a can of what I THOUGHT was cooking spray in the middle of the box so I grabbed it and sprayed it into the pan to keep my rice from sticking.

WARNING KIDS - DON'T SPRAY STUFF IN YOUR COOKING WITHOUT READING LABEL FIRST.

It was not cooking spray. It was heavy duty oven cleaner.

Um, yeah. Not good. Suffice it to say that it made one heck of a mess and our dinner was ruined. I was darn lucky the stuff didn't catch fire.

So we've had our moments with this move. There have been several incidents that have left us frustrated, exhausted, overwhelmed or exasperated. Still, more and more each day I am all the more convinced that this deliberate downsizing was a wise move for us. Bit by bit this place will become HOME, even though it's not our house. I expect we'll live here about five years. After that, who knows?

For now, it's a fit.

What to do with all those green jackets??

I'm still going through all my closets and drawers to claim order out of chaos. Anything I don't actually USE or TREASURE is going away. It is the season of the grand purge.

As I walked from one area of the house to another with yet another box to either go to the trash or the Goodwill I smiled at my sweet husband relaxing in his recliner watching golf. Why on earth would ANYONE watch golf? I have no clue. But then, he can't understand why I find organizing a closet relaxing either. This isn't obligatory housework to me. I did all that domestic duty stuff on Friday and Saturday. Rather, this puttering in the closets that I'm doing now is my own soothing way of reminiscing as I explore the bread-crumb-trail I've left in my Hansel and Gretel Life and my willful decision to let most of it take a hike.

As I was cleaning out my closets and observing my husband watching golf the thought occurs to me. What does Tiger Woods do with all those green jackets he collects every time he wins another Masters? Do they just hang in his closet or go in a case in a trophy room or what? I can just imagine the number of trophies of one sort or another that man has accumulated. Does there come a point for accomplished athletes where they no longer need or take pleasure in displaying all that praise?

Which leads me to wonder again, what will I do with the various awards, plaques, and professional fru-fru I have accumulated over the years. Right now it's all just sitting in a box in my closet. During this grand purge mode I'm ever so tempted to look at it one last time and then pitch it all out. But if I do, will I regret it later??

I've grown weary of accumulation. I ache to simplify. I want to surround my self with open space. But what to do with the gathered up accoutrements of fifty years of living? Is there really any reason to keep an ancient piece of needlepoint I did when I was ten or the quilt squares I practiced liquid embroidery on that never made their way into a quilt? I think not.

Still.... among my boxes and bags of stuff in the closet is basket of old letters that my great-great grandfather wrote over a period of years to his younger sister, Libbie. I love those letters and the glimpse they give me of who John L. V. Thomas was. Which makes me wonder...should I gather up a representative sampling of all the awards and certificates, summer stock theater scripts? (Many moons ago I was in Gammer Gurton's Needle and also played the dinasaur in Thornton Wilder's Skin of Our Teeth) Is there any reason or purpose to preserving a portion of my own memorabelia to pass down to generations yet to come?

Nope. I don't thnk so. None of that stuff is who I was. Perhaps I'll just leave them this ridiculous blog. At least this is something I don't have to dust.

I'm headed to Michigan next week to visit my sons and the wild tribe of grandchildren. When I go I am taking a box of sports trophies and U.S. Marine medals with me. My boys are both in their 30's now. They can keep or discard their own life stuff however they choose.

I am every so ready for empty space.

Junk Drawer

I've spent the past couple hours cleaning out junk drawers. I felt all sort of righteous ambition when I began this project, but now I'm starting to think it may be hopeless.

Many kitchens or laundry rooms have that one catch all sort of drawer that collects odd bits of this and that. That's understandable. If we had just ONE, that would be fine. Our house, however, seems to have gotten more that it's share. The clutter and chaos in these drawers baffle the imagination. So today I decided to take control.

The particular drawers I happen to be wrestling with this evening are the ones in my husband's night stand. Ordinarily I ignore the drawers on his side of the bed when I do my cleaning. But today as I was picking up I went to tuck something into a drawer for him and was horrified by the wild menagerie I found there. So I dumped it all out onto the bed and had him identify what was to keep and what could get pitched out. He groused about it a bit, saying it wasn't so bad and I should just shut the drawers and not worry about it...but I prevailed. Once I got it all laid out on the bed it became apparent pretty quickly that there was A LOT of stuff in those drawers that had no place in our bedroom.

There were 37 pencils and pens, 18 keys we have no idea what they go to, a wild assortment of batteries, and several items of fishing tackle. There was a package of mantles for a Coleman lantern, restaurant and gas receipts from our trip to Alaska in 2005, various nuts and bolts, and a few weird shaped metal things that neither one of us could figure out what were or where they came from. There were ear plugs (for use with machinery, not sleeping) and guitar picks and old combs and a tool for adjusting the lawn sprinklers. There was money from Bon Aire picked up on one of his scuba trips, a button that came off an item of clothing we no longer own, an attachment for the vacuum cleaner, and something that looks like some sort of buckle ... to what? There was sheet music, a deck of cards, duct tape, and a rain poncho in a little plastic pouch. There were loose cough drops and paper clips, post it notes and pennies. There was an allen wrench, four different pocket knives, and a packet of salt from Lufthansa airlines - I guess from our trip to Egypt. There were rubber bands and chapstick, plumbing parts and a piece of an old phone. Oh wait! There's more...there was an old blood pressure monitor and glasses lens cleaner, a home depot gift card that has been used up and a CD for how to be an effective Sunday school teacher. There was... ok, ok you get the idea.

HOW and WHY did he get all this stuff in there? My inner clutter Nazi is in take-no-prisoners mania of wanting to have a place for everything and everything in its place. But when faced with the sheer magnitude of different categories of stuff co-mingled in those drawers I admit my courage begins to waver. I sort and I toss out and I put away. But still there is a pile of STUFF I don't know what to do with and a few odds and ends that I don't even know what are. What's a good wife to do? Sigh.

He's a good man. He's kind and he's generous, a fabulous kisser, and a pretty good cook. He supports me in more ways than I can count. He's handsome and funny, dependable, and has integrity right down to the marrow of his bones. So why should I care so much that he tends to leave his socks on the couch at the end of the day and gives cluttered junk drawers a whole new meaning?

I take a deep breath and tell myself to keep it all in perspective. After all, my office gets pretty out of control messy at times too.

Overall our house is quite tidy and with the the exception of the occassional sink full of dishes or kitchen floor than needs mopping I'd usually be quite comfortable having people pop in unannounced. Granted, the closet and drawers are sort of scary. But I'm not planning on inviting fly lady over any time soon.