Monday, January 1, 2018

Kitchen Make over Stage One

I haven't been around for a long time but I am going to try to change that.  2018 is in the plans to be the year of simplifying.  Its a very long story, and one I don't want to really go in to at the moment but just know that I am surrounded by many many things that are beyond overwhelming me.
Believe it or not I was born a neat freak.  At a very young age I could not go to sleep if things around me were not in the correct place and if I managed to sleep, I had nightmares.   I had a cleaning method that did not work for anyone else in my house.  As a child and even now, I do not have the capacity to look at a space and say  this item goes there even if there are other things in that space that DONT belong there.  When I was a kid, when I was sent to my room to "clean it up" the ONLY way I could ever make it work was to take everything and put it in the center of my floor and then systematically put everything back where it truly belonged.  In my head it was just the easiest way to do things.  After all how could you put something away in its place if something were already THERE?   Then you either move that other item over or you have to take it and put it where it goes, probably having to move the thing that is in ITS place, and on and on and on...... so just get it all empty and put things back where they belong at one time and get rid of what doesn't belong.  Does that make sense to anyone out there but me?

Anyway,  I have been doing a lot of thinking since I saw a video that a vlogger named Clutterbug does.  She mentioned that there are basically 4 different kinds of people.  One of them is the person who wants their things put away, have systems to take care of those things.  They can be either simple systems (one type of person) or more complex systems( another type of person) and you can want many things, or few things, you can want to see your things or have them out of sight but know they are there.  I am struggling to figure out what type of person I am and I am thinking that I like a lot of things... I don't care if they are in eye site or not as long as I have a system to care for them and know where they are when I need them.

So this brings on 2018.  I have got to find some systems and simplification in the worlds that I live in.  I can ONLY control me and my stuff but I have to find away to do that and ignore the rest.  I believe that part of my issue is that I find no margains for rest in my worlds because I spend all my time trying to find balance and organization and then fall exhausted into bed, have nightmares about chaos and wake up to struggle my way out of bed and do it again.
Boy I am going to have to go back and edit this because all I am doing is whining......

So step one in this year is in connection to working on The 7 Experiment by Jen Hatmaker deeply this time, I have a friend who has volunteered to help me organize the kitchen here right off the bat.  She suggested that I take before photos so that we can also do after photos and make me feel much better.  So here are the photos that I took today.  I had already started to pull things out of cabinets. (again at her suggestion to have an idea of what I am keeping and what needs to go to bless someone else or is just flat trash)  And we had made a quick trip to the grocery store to get supplies for dinner today. I'm
justifying completely and not counting this trip as it is not the meal I am cooking that we shopped for but the one Jonathan is cooking... My less than 7 starts tomorrow.  Don't judge me.. Well Judge me if you want but don't expect me to care on this one.

My friend also reminded me that since this is not truly MY kitchen, I am not responsible for 60 years worth of collection.  I think that my brain just is combining my real kitchen, with this one and seeing double the amount of things that will eventually have to be decided about.  But take a breath... Don't judge yourself based on things you truly have no control over and just put one foot in front of the other until this is done.. it wont be completed today, or next week, or even the week after.  The goal is to have things under control by the end of 2018.. and that is 364 from now.  One of my daughters would tell me to eat that elephant one bite at a time... My other daughter would tell me, Just do the next thing.  Both of those set of wise words involve Don't look at the whole picture at this moment.
so the WHOLE PICTURE starts here: