De-junk your kitchen

Halfway thru Leftover Week – just pasta puttanesca and pumpkin soup to go on the dinner front! Here’s another entry from the deep-freeze of my journals (Feb this year). I hope you enjoy. Perhaps you even identify with me a little?

I cannot read a home magazine or one of my beloved Ikea catalogs without sooner or later moving from the couch and into the kitchen in search of a makeover to deliver. Or the laundry, or the bookshelves. These magazines create an itch to re-arrange and re-organise and re-style, in my own limited way (since I don’t have a block of Marseilles savon or artful roll of wallpaper to hand – not at 9.30 at night, anyway).

This usually results in re-organising the ingredients in my pantry. Yes, that is my guilty secret (actually I have worse inclinations, like re-organising my cutlery drawer or tea towel stash). I decant half empty jars of walnuts into smaller jars, so the supply looks more substantial (and aesthetically pleasing) and the shelf space is better used. I transfer things from one container to another, creating new groupings, like with like. And then I usually label the daylights out of everything. Yes, I know.

Last week, I was prompted to re-arrange my baking drawers by the purchase of my new measuring jug. Because I’d somehow lost my other one (how do you lose a measuring jug?). Out come shoe boxes, clean and saved for just this kind of re-purposing – corralling my measuring spoons, scoops, cups and jugs into new and exciting combinations!

About a month ago, I also got ruthless with the plastics – the ice cream containers, takeaway containers, yoghurt pots; the ones with lid and the ones without (however in a short time they have multiplied again; every time I open the cupboard door I risk being bonked on the head by a falling container). I sorted thru the salt and pepper and found a new display spot for them on the bench (the yellow Twinings tin I kept the salt flakes in was too pretty to hide behind cupboard doors!).

I get this wonderfully calm feeling when I stand back and survey the results. When I open the drawers and doors, or walk back into the room solely to have another peek at my handiwork (only five minutes after leaving the room. Again - yes, I know).

There’s this calm optimism that my life will be better – that I am now a better person. That life is now smoother, more logical, and more liberated because of this beautiful underlying structure I have imposed on things. I am fully aware that I’m thinking that the next day will somehow be better and brighter because of this magazine-induced frenzy to sort my flour collection.

I chuckle to myself – I can see thru all of this! And then I think, I really should get back to my more productive and less OCD hobbies. Like folding my socks just so.