Sparking Joy

For starters, let me just say I did very little on my winter break, and let me clarify that the only reason I had a winter "break" was because our daughter, Laurel, was home for a month from Emporia State University. Hence, my lone reference to an academic calendar.

With my job as co-owner of our lawn service, I am still on winter break, although with my job as bookkeeper, I guess I need to start gathering stuff for the tax preparer. Ugh. But I digress.

So after the hoopla of the holidays, Dave and I were doing nothing (and by that I mean playing Words with Friends, although he is recovering from knee replacement surgery and going to physical therapy so there is his excuse) and Laurel, holed up in her room with Netflix discovered "Tidying up with Marie Kondo."

After she tidied her room, she suggested we tackle the kitchen. I was only too happy to jump on her bandwagon.

Over the next couple of days we removed everything from the kitchen cabinets. We kept only the coffee mugs that sparked joy in us. ("Mom, there are only two people living here now. How many do you think you really need?") Apparently I DON'T need two dozen!

We got out a tote for Caleb's things that he had left behind. When he was in ceramics class in high school he made nearly 100 coffee mugs (seriously, I am not exaggerating. He numbered each one on the bottom). We had about a half dozen still in our cabinet, but we weren't using them as daily drinkers. I kept the one he specifically made for me and packed up the rest for him.

She went through my china cabinet, which had become sort of a dumping ground for extra glassware and serving pieces. I transferred some things to my a old kitchen cabinets in our garage.

We got rid of miscellaneous water bottles and coozies. We tackled the junk drawer. We designated a new drawer just for Dave's household tools.

When we remodeled our kitchen in 2016 Dave installed pull-outs in nearly all of the cabinets, which I love. However, when we were going through the pantry, Laurel suggested moving the canned goods to a lower shelf, since the one they were on was too high to see easily. Great idea! Why didn't I think of that?

Laurel said she wished she had gotten on her organizing kick earlier, we could have done the whole house. I do too!