I needed a quick and easy one tonight, folks.
I thought this would be easy: match the tops with the bottoms and see what's left.
It was easy. There was one lid left.
But then, I got to thinking about all my mason jars and the foil "takeout" type containers I've purchased to store home-made make-ahead freezer meals. Those are downstairs in my basement pantry.
And I looked at them and I thought: why toss them?
Sure, I haven't made too many make-ahead meals (and when I do I just use my 8x8 pyrex) and my days of making broths and boiling beans are pretty much at an end for now...and they aren't that expensive to replace...but
and here it is....the reason to keep them....
I have the room.
Someday I will make broth from roasted bones again, someday I will make up some jam, someday, I just might break out that canner and get to risking botulism.
Normally, "someday" is a good reason to let things go. But this is not a wish or a dream or an aspiration. I've done it before, I'll do it again. I have a track record with these things. There are seasons of life we all go through. This is a busy one. It will slow down. Someday. Until then, these can stay here.
What are your goals for decluttering?
Ever had a situation like mine where you decided to leave well enough alone?
To celebrate my blog's eighth anniversary, we're taking a tour through time and looking at the changes I've made to our house over the years. This is the fifth in the series. The last areas to be featured were the Bedrooms, 2007-2014. If you'd like to start at the beginning, go here: The Front and Back Yards, 2007-2014. You can also catch all the retrospective posts under the Prairie Home Tour tab.
This room has been known by many names. The Office. The Scraproom (or, as it is labeled here on the blog, my "creative space.") Recently, I took to calling it "the study." But that just felt pretentious--especially as I decluttered 80 per cent of the books out of here earlier this year!
So. Let's call it the dining room--which it is about three times a year.
The rest of the year it is my sanctuary, my haven.
It wasn't always that way! In fact, it started out quite the opposite.
These posts are quite long, so click through to read through, thanks!
Read the previous entry in this series: Day 4: The Freezer or start at the beginning with the introduction: 5 Ways Clutter Costs.
This recipe binder represents fourteen years of learning to cook. Seriously.
I did not learn to cook until my daughter was born.
This is at capacity. Any more recipes would be annoying.
I mean, I cooked. I knew how to make spaghetti sauce from scratch. I knew how to make muffins and how to make lentil soup. I could make anything--as long as I followed a recipe. The trick was making dinner--night after night after night.
When I had my daughter 15 years ago, I realised I had no idea how to cook and clean for four people, two of whom could not control their bowels. Somehow, I found fly lady--and through her, Leanne Ely.
Leanne Ely has written a series of cookbooks called Saving Dinner. (There is now a website of the same name, I see.) In each cookbook, she divided the year into seasons and then further subdivided the seasons into weeks. Every week had six recipes--and an accompanying grocery list. (This was fifteen years ago, remember. Revolutionary.)
In time, I learned to make a menu plan for myself. I would plan seven dinners and then make up a shopping list. Sometimes we'd have Monday's dinner on Wednesday--it really didn't matter. I knew I had all the ingredients. For a long time, I even planned a month's worth of meals at a time.
Over time, I collected recipes. Some of them arefrom Leanne Ely's books: I used them somuch the pages fell out--so I just popped them into a page protector and into a binder and away I went.
I consult the binder first when I'm planning the week.
What I do now--and I don't do it the "best" way--not at all--is I look at Safeway's on-line flyer and see what's on sale. I plan whatever meat we're going to eat from what's on sale.
Then, I go down to the freezer and see what meat we have on hand. I make a quick list. (I tell ya, a voice-activated inventory app on the freezer would be so handy.) It could go something like this:
Me: "Suri, I'm taking out the chicken legs."
Suri: "With back attached or without?"
Me: "Suri, I'm putting in some ground beef."
Suri: "Expiry date?"
Me, upstairs at the computer: "Suri, show me all the fish I have in the freezer and rank by expiry date, soonest to latest."
Wouldn't that be great?
As I went through the book, I asked myself:
"Will we ever eat this again?"
"If I've never made it, would I want to try it?"
There were even some duplicates!
Now, I can menu plan more easily. (Bonus: I found the recipes for the dishes I cook at Thanksgiving. I'd thought they were somewhere else! Good thing--Thanksgiving is next weekend!)
For meal planning, I use a form based on one I got in a Simplify 101 course. (They also have an e-book on menu planning.) My menu planning form has room only for dinners. It's what I need.
On the left, there's room to record the expected temperature--and my work hours. That helps me plan whether we want something BBQ'd or cooked in the crock pot, for example.
At the bottom of the form is the place to record my groceries.
I find it so handy to have my menu plan with me when I'm shopping for groceries.
(Now, I know there are apps which do all this for you--but I don't have a phone.)
When I have done the shopping, I take my menu planning form and the recipes for the week--and clip them all together on the fridge. That way, I can ask one of those two children, both teenagers now, and learning other life skills, to make dinner--and the information about what to make and the recipe are right there. No excuses! That, to me, is the biggest benefit of menu planning--I can hand off making dinner.
Do you menu plan? Have you got a recipe binder (or something similar)?
Not only do we have an upright freezer--but it is stocked with meat and vegetables, meals in a box for times I am too busy to cook and jams and broths and pre-made home made meals from those times when I was not. All of it, I realise, in the context of everyone who eats in the entire world (and that, hopefully, would be everyone, though sadly is not) we are extremely fortunate.
Looking after the food in my freezer is just good stewardship of our resources. Yesterday, I defined clutter as things out of line with my intentions. Well, one of my intentions is to live according to our values--and good stewardship is one of them.
This touches on what I want my home to be. In part, it is to be a refuge from the world, (I'm an introvert in an extrovert's job). It is, more importantly, to be a place that supports and reflects our values. And clutter is my greatest enemy to living my values (Well, OK, maybe fear (and the accompanying cowardice) is my greatest enemy--but clutter is right up there on the list.)
Have you thought about why you want to declutter? Have you thought about the purpose of your home?
The owner of any business will tell you that inventory is money--but it's money that's frozen, tied up, already spent and not doing any good, yet. That's how I feel about the food in my freezer. When we get low on funds, I look to my freezer and do my best to eat through it before we buy more. (Yep, frugality is another value!)
We need to do that again.
I took all the food out and put it in laundry baskets which I covered with towels. Then I held my breath. Would the freezer defrost before the food thawed?
Chris and I went out--and when we returned about five hours after I emptied the freezer--everything was fine. The raspberries from the garden and a few jars of homemade chicken broth were just starting to thaw a bit.
I keep my food organized so I can quickly see what I have when I plan my meals. (We'll talk more about that tomorrow.)
It doesn't stay like this--other people put away the groceries sometimes and don't pay attention to where things go. But it's a good foundation.
Read the previous entry in this series Day 2: Your Choiceor start at the beginning with the introduction: 5 Ways Clutter Costs.
Yes, the fridge is a decluttering project.
Obviously, there are all those unidentifiable science experiments lurking around which need to be tossed. Expired yogurt. Moldy cantaloupe. (I nearly cried.) But it is more than that.
Just what is clutter?
For me, clutter is anything that is not the way it is supposed to be. Or to put it another way. clutter is a state of affairs where something is not in line with my intentions, or the way I want things to be in my life. So, a pile of papers on a kitchen table is clutter--but not the same pile in a box designated for them. Anything without a home is clutter. Anything waiting for me to deal with it is clutter. Anything I am keeping "just in case" can be clutter--it depends on the case! (Though, probably, it is clutter--I'm just not ready to admit it yet.)
What counts as clutter is different for everyone--even, sometimes, when they live in the same house!
So, what is a messy, nasty fridge but a collection of failed intentions?
Ingredients for dinners we meant to make and didn't. Dinners we did eat--but didn't finish. Half-finished jars of spaghetti sauce--you know what I'm talking about.
Yesterday, I handled the overwhelm with a timer. That worked well for a relatively small job. But this one? This was not a small job. Easier, maybe. But not quick. A timer wouldn't work.
I decided to try another way--the strategy of small steps. I remember an article by Martha Beck where she talked about this. You want to clean out the closet but it is too big a job. Do just the first step, she advised. Make it so easy you can't refuse. Like, go open the closet door.
It's brilliant. Especially for a task like this where I don't have a lot of counter space for all the things. So, how was I going to clean the fridge?
One shelf at a time.
I started with the crisper drawers.
I did those and the top shelf before dinner.
After dinner, I tackled the remaining shelves, the door and the freezer. I had permission from myself to take a break--but when I was done the door, I was on a roll and just launched into the freezer.
Ugh.
So many black bananas.
Sorry about that kitchen floor. For some reason washing it is really complicated. But I did drag out the vacuum and gave those coils a quick once over.
So how do you tackle a fridge?
One bite at a time.
What are you working on, today? Are you doing your fridge or another big job? Would breaking it down into bite sized pieces help?
Read the next entry in this series Day 4: The Freezer
Read the previous entry in this series: Day 1: Let's Start or or start at the beginning with the introduction: 5 Ways Clutter Costs.
You want to put your house in order?
Tired of living in the mess?
You've come to the right place.
I am, too.
Over the next 29 days we're going to tackle all that stuff weighing us down. We are going to breathe again. I promise.
Right this minute, I am sitting in what is probably the messiest my house has been in a long, long time.
And I'm utterly paralysed.
It's all clutter of the kind we will be dealing with over the next 29 days: stuff that needs to be put away, mostly, and a few things which need to be tossed.
This is our surface clutter--and the low hanging fruit--easy stuff.
The next twenty-nine days are not meant to be difficult or arduous. Use the "lovely limitation" of a time limit, if you like--use it to focus like a laser on an area or task. Set the timer. Ten minutes is fine, whatever you can do. Flylady trained me to work in fifteen minute increments--that's what I'll use.
So, first up, how to tackle the whole house, room by room, surface by surface.
Whole House Decluttering: Supplies: Timer Container with handles (for things to be taken to another place) 2 grocery-sized bags. 1 for trash, 1 for donations.
When the whole house is trashed it can be difficult to know where to begin. Start with one room. Doesn't matter which one. Bring a container with you and your two bags. I am thinking grocery sized bags--you don't want big black garbage bin bags sitting around cluttering up the space waiting to be filled! Set the timer. Enter the room and look around. Anything super easy? Begin there. If that's overwhelming turn right and focus on the two feet in front of you. Start. Put anything that doesn't belong there in your container. Put the trash in the trash bag. Put any donations in the donations bag.
Move quickly. This is not the time to go through the family photos or the toys! This is not the time to worry about having too many shoes. Make your decisions quickly. If you're dithering, move on. You can come back later.
When the timer goes off, set it again--for just five minutes. Put the trash in the garbage, walk around the house and empty your basket, lastly, take the donations to the car. Remove them immediately.
That's it! Done. Breathe.
I chose to tackle the kitchen table. (Yes, part of room totally counts!) As you can see, it was over-run.
The easiest thing? That mattress cover in the Value Village bag. 90% of this is stuff that needs to back down to the basement--the stairs are on the left through that door.
See that blue nightstand? I have been dithering about whether to keep it for some time, now. Thing is, it needs to be sanded and restored--and I don't know where I'd use it. I didn't make the decision today--but I did put a deadline on my plans. If I haven't found a place for it (and looked after it) by June of next year then I will let it go.
Immediately, ok, not immediately, I didn't breathe deeply right away--actually, I confess, I was actually panting a bit (going up and down those stairs was quite the workout!) but after--eventually-- after I recovered--I walked into the kitchen and noticed my body did not tense up--I actually noticed.
I took a deep breath. It felt so good.
Fifteen minutes didn't give me quite enough time to wipe down the table--or sweep the floor (cringe) but I did do those things "off camera" as it were.
What area did you pick? How did it go? Did you have any obstacles to overcome?
Sometimes I worry I will never be on the other side of the clutter--the confusion, the mess, the chaos. Sometimes, I think it's just all too much and I deserve a day off and would somebody just get over here and put this d*mn thing back where it goes?
A clean and calm house seems impossible--as soon as I clean the kitchen, my daughter bakes cookies, as soon as I make the bed, the dog jumps on it and pulls down the pillows.
You know, life.
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You know the advice out there--write blog posts with titles like Clean Your House in 3 Easy Steps, or 5 Ways Clutter Costs... (that was the intro to this series, by the way, and where you will find all the posts in the series and printables to get you started) but sometimes I feel like I'm poised on the diving board over the pool of pretense. I'm no expert. Not even close. I am fumbling around here folks. And I can't be the only one. I want to be alongside people, my people, on this journey, too. Fellow fumblers, welcome.
I want to grow this blog in readership because I want the fumblers to know they're not alone. I'm here. And there's hope. Really, though some days it's harder to find than others (I know it's right here, somewhere) ---as long as we keep trying--as long as we keep picking up and putting away--even if the best we can possibly do is tread water--then, hey, that's OK, at least our heads are above water. At least we're breathing. And that's a good thing.
So, I want to encourage, I want to be encouraged. I don't want to be a poser. I don't have all the answers--sometimes things work for me, sometimes things don't. Sometimes I do what I'm supposed to do, sometimes I don't. Doesn't really matter. You learn the most from the fails. You can't quit smoking unless you keep on quitting. You'll never have a clean, calm decluttered house if you don't keep cleaning and decluttering. And you'll never have people come alongside you unless you invite them.
Consider yourself invited.
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I made up two printables to help us on our decluttering journey. This one has daily assignments. Every Friday is "your choice." Here is the link to that.
The second is a blank daily schedule so you can customize your decluttering to fit your own situation.
Here is the link to that one. (You will be taken to google docs. Please let me know if you have any trouble.)
Or, you can just look around and do whatever you want. Whatever works.
Me, I'll be jumping in and out of the scheduled tasks. I promise this, though: I'll do something everyday, for at least fifteen minutes and I'll let you know how it goes. I'd like to know how it goes for you, too.
So, let's start. Day 1: The Kitchen Counter
If the whole house is not trashed or you just need a nudge to get things done, the pre-planned decluttering schedule has us in the kitchen today, clearing off the kitchen counters. Start with the easiest thing. What was mine? That big empty juice bottle--straight to recycling. (Confession: I tossed it down the stairs. I'll put it in the proper spot next time I go down.)
Here is my kitchen counter:
Yes, folks, really real life.
After 15 minutes (well, if we're being completely honest, it was more like 20.):
Yay.
Now, it's your turn.
Let me know what you're working on today and how it went. What was your super easy thing to declutter?
Read the next entry in the series Day 2: Your Choice.
