A favorite feature of my new kitchen, the pull-out spice had become a source of stress because the spice bottles were all on the middle shelf. I'm not sure why I put them there. It makes no sense now. It was difficult to retrieve the right spices in the heat of cooking. Picture bending over and trying to read the labels on the tops of the bottles while your onions are starting to burn. This is the stress of the privileged, true. But it's not the stress of too many yachts.
There in my relaxed post-yoga state I had a vision of spice bottles on the top shelf. The vision had an aura. And a song. Back home I emptied out the cabinet, moved the middle shelf to accommodate taller items and put everything back. My life did improve. It's easy to find the right spices now.
It was so satisfying, doing this. That's the first thing to say. It was work, but so satisfying. For me mess=stress so creating order out of these chaotic spaces is highly rewarding. It is now so easy to see what canned and dry goods I have in stock and to access them. BTW, you'll see some Marie Kondo touches in using boxes to hold smaller items together.
Amazingly, that little corner cabinet with its Inventive Susans held all pans and cooking tools from the pull out cabinet plus things I had stored in the pantry cabinets. This means happy happy pantries where water bottles no longer bounce out when you open the door. Now there was room to put my seldom-used mixer in the pantry, which freed up counter space. Less clutter, less mess, less stress. Happy happy joy joy. Yay, me.
Facing the messy freezer drawer I was overcome with exhaustion and had to lie down for a little while. But now it's clean plus neatly organized into meats, veggies, and fruits.
Before working on the Baking Cabinet of Doom I had to have another little lie-down. Gluten free baking requires many different types of flour which leads to crowded and messy baking cabinets. I eliminated of it and stored smaller items like molasses in containers. Now it looks wonderful. It all looks wonderful. I just want to open all the cabinet doors and drawers and breathe in the tidiness. I even cleaned the fridge.
It all started yoga class. Thinking about how to improve my life led me to re-order my lovely kitchen so it works even better. It was a creative and satisfying process that has me determined to finish this Tidying Project. One room down, a couple more to go then the Dreaded Basement. But guess what? All my tidying this weekend inspired my son to start tidying his room. Amazing.