Thursday, January 31, 2013

Misdirected Energy

There's a joke that goes through email-osophere about a person who is busy all day and doesn't get anything done.

Something like this:  She starts to take out the garbage, and notices the bag of chicken feed beside the garbage can.  She puts the garbage down and goes to feed the chickens.  She sees a couple of eggs, puts down the feed and brings the eggs to the kitchen.  Suddenly hungry, she goes to make an omelet and finds she has no green onions.  She goes to the garden to pick some onions and starts weeding a few unwanted weeds, etc., etc.  At the end of the day the garbage still hasn't really been taken out. 

Sometimes my day is like that.

I read a few emails and have started being inundated with messages from Fly Lady, the lady who keeps telling people to organize and clean and declutter bit by bit, so that it doesn't overwhelm at any point.  One of her daily must-dos is to shine her sink.  Do the dishes and leave the counters and sink clean.  I generally do that as soon as the kids go off to school and everyone's breakfast is done.

So I did that.  Alice was at school, Yvon went to visit a relative in the hospital, Beth was still sleeping and Laura and I were up. 

After the dishes were done, I wanted to find my coconut oil and try making lip balm for a friend (and us).  I searched in vain through my messy cupboard and didn't find it.  Once half of the contents were already on the counter, I thought I'd organize just one shelf.  That way things wouldn't fall all over me and maybe I'd find the missing coconut oil.

I forgot to take a before picture because I wasn't really planning to make a big thing of this project.  However, this is how my shelf looked when it was done.


I found a LOT of cornmeal, and some of my gluten free ingredients come in little bags that fall all over the place.  I didn't actually find a lot of old food that needed discarding, but this much packaging came from that one little shelf.


No coconut oil was discovered and I was ready to quit, but Laura wanted to take on a shelf and by this time Beth was awake and willing to take on the tea shelf.  Who am I to turn down volunteer help?  They emptied the shelves onto the counter and table, leaving this:




 I actually left the house to do an errand and came home to this:



 Nice!  And a table full of packaging and garbage.  Everything is now labelled and in containers that don't topple on you when you search for something.  Some of them have extra information on them like "Unknown Chinese Tea - try if you dare!", "Beans, beans, the magical fruit", "Weak - only Mom likes it".  Some miscellaneous teas went into this modified tea tin.


 I don't know what's with Alice's face here, but this is kind of how I felt when (after all that organizing), we never did find the coconut oil!


Here's a before and after comparison (minus the before for the bottom shelf).


So, no lip balm experiment for today.  It looks like I might have to organize another shelf in another pantry before I can get to that project. 

1 comment:

Coralee said...

Wow! Ladies you can come here and sort my cupboards anytime... I especially love your labelling!