There is a Season for Everything

I've been thinking about the different seasons and how they affect our lives.  I've especially been reflecting on it since I've gone back to being a preschool teacher, again, and we are teaching the children about different seasons.  As many of you know, I've been going through a season in my personal life in which I'm trying to declutter and come to a better place of understanding what I truly treasure in my life and what I can appreciate, but part ways with.  Thanks to the Marie Kondo book called, "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up" I've been on this tidying journey for over a year now.  I'm still not finished.  I'm finding that the big category of "komono", or miscellaneous items is a VERY big category and so I'm slowly making my way through it. Since we're on the topic of seasons, let's start with one of the misc. items that begins with the letter "s", "seasonings" or "spices".

Lovely "After" shot of my spices

Since I also read Kondo's second book, "Spark Joy", I was further inspired to revisit a few areas of my kitchen that I felt could be better tidied up.  She suggests keeping as few things on the countertops as possible.  She especially suggests keeping things away from the stove area, since they can be easily splattered with grease and hard to clean up.  So, I took a good look at the items I had on my countertops and thought about how I might move my spice rack so that it's still handy but not right next to the stove.  So, I decided to go through my extra spices that I had stored above the stove and eliminate nearly half of them to make room for our nice spinning spice rack that we got for our wedding.  It was definitely hard to keep it clean when it was next to the stove.

Here are the spices that I got rid of to clear out some space above the stove...

Then I cleaned out what looked like 30 years of grease buildup on that cupboard shelf above the sink before putting new, clean contact paper down.

Next, I placed back one of the little metal shelves I bought several years ago on the left side and placed one box of extra spices on the top of it with my measuring cups on the bottom.  I put my oils, sprays in the middle and put my spinning spice rack on the right side.

Since I no longer needed the other little metal shelf that used to be on the right side above the stove, I decided to re-purpose it and use it on the top shelf where I store my teas.  Of course, it made me clean out some of the old teas that I haven't used for a long time. Here's my newly tidied cupboard where I store my items for things like tea and hot chocolate, etc.

I love how it looks and how it makes it much easier to keep things clean in my kitchen.  Here's what my countertop looks now that there is a little more space on it.

Since we are discussing misc. items that begin with the letter, "S", the second one that I've recently tidied up is my sewing drawer.  I don't do much sewing.  I don't have a sewing machine.  But, once in a while there is something like a button that needs sewing on.  So, I do keep a few basic sewing supplies available.  I've designated one drawer in a table which I bought on my neighbor's garage sale for this purpose.  The table is one that you would normally place in an entryway.  But, since I don't have an entryway in my small cottage-style home, I've placed it next to the door between my sunporch and my garage.  As Kondo recommends, I found small boxes or a lid of a box to corral like items together.  Now my sewing drawer is not a messy mishmash of junk.  But, it sparks joy when I open it and can quickly find the items that I need.

The third "S" misc. area that I've recently been working on is our Storage area in our utility room.  Let's just say that this is the area of the house that sparks joy the least.  The good part about it is that it has lots of shelving, some of which was already built in when we bought the house.  Others are free standing shelves that we had either purchased or received from others.  But, since we moved in this has just been a holding place for tons of old stuff that I have been unwilling to face.  So, I finally decided to begin to tackle this area.  I first took a closer look at all of the items that were stored on one shelf.  I decided to remove any sentimental items from this area and move them to our guest bedroom, where I've been designating as the holding place for all sentimental items, since that is the last category that Kondo recommends going through.  Then I started going through any boxes of my things and discarded things like old college notebooks and toys that were old and broken.  I couldn't bear to go through my cassette tapes, because I actually still have a cassette tape player in my car that I sometimes use and I love music so much.  So, for now I decided to keep all of the plastic boxes where I'm storing my cassette tapes.  Otherwise, the only boxes I left are all boxes of my husband's things, such as his teaching supplies from his former job.  I'll leave those for him to go through.  At least you can now see under the shelf and things are stacked in an orderly way that I don't fear that they'll come crashing down on our heads.

The next job in the basement storage area/utility room was to remove any boxes of stuff from the floor.  Every time my parents come they keep bringing more boxes of my old stuff, some of which I've yet to sort through.  Perhaps it's because a lot of it includes sentimental items.  So, those have been temporarily moved closer to the guest bedroom until I can go through them.  Next, I thoroughly swept, vacuumed and mopped the floor.  The only problem is that there's still a terrible eyesore running down the middle of our floor.  At one time the previous owners had work down on the pipes down there.  Whoever did the work tried to patch over it with some cement, which is totally breaking up and crumbling.  It's really quite ugly, but we don't have the money to do anything about it for now.  So, I got an idea.  We have some plastic mats, which we bought from the local Asian Lao market.  Since they are long, I decided that they would cover much of the ugly eyesore.  So, here's the before and after photos.

In addition to the one free-standing shelf that I tidied, I also managed to go through at least one box that was on the built-in shelves.  I have not opened this box since we moved 5 years ago!  It was filled with glassware and some old mugs.  I decided to actually pull out the glassware and put some of the pretty vases that still spark joy on the shelves out in our garage.

Kondo recommends trying to get out the items that still spark joy and using them rather than hiding them away from the light of day. Besides, some of our glasses we had received from our wedding and used on a daily basis had broken.  So, I decided that it's time that we also use the vintage glasses that were passed down from either his parents or grandparents.  I felt like they spark joy since they are a family heirloom and they tell the story of Colorado's state history on them, as they are Centennial reminders of the settlers first discovering gold and moving here from 1859 until 1959.

 

The more I tidy up the more I find that it helps my life and brain to feel relaxed and decluttered.  Sometimes, I still feel overwhelmed by how much more I still need to go through.  But, I'm feeling good about the progress that I'm slowly making.  How about you?  Are you finding that you are in a new season of learning to appreciate the gifts that God has given you?