January 11

We've been working on clearing, winnowing, and cleaning.  For 30 minutes this evening we had one whole drawer in the kitchen with nothing in it.  Miss Minimalist's book, The Joy of Less: A Minimalist Living Guide, suggests that you do zones.  Zone 1 what is you use every day and is within arms reach.  Zone 2 is what you use frequently but not every day, maybe weekly or every other week.  This goes outside of arm's reach but still near enough to access easily.

Zone 3 is things that you use rarely and can be stored in less accessible places: garage, basement, or in this case, in the cupboard over the refrigerator.  The small cupboard over the fridge is only accessible by standing on a stool.  Even on a stool, I can barely reach the far back corner, and I'm tall.

So the drawer right next to stove (Zone 1) now houses only really useful kitchen utensils, ones we use all the time.  And you can actually see the bottom of the drawer!

The third drawer down in the next row (Zone 2 and the temporarily empty drawer) now has less frequently used tools such as the dessert serving spatulas, the nutmeg grater, the flat cheese grater.  You can see the bottom of the drawer and each individual tool.

That cupboard over the fridge holds vases that we actually use for flowers and two tall clear containers with all of the holiday baking equipment.  We wouldn't want to buy new ones every year when baking time rolls around, but we certainly don't need them taking up prime kitchen storage space the rest of the year.

And there are three bags to go to St. Vincent de Paul tomorrow so someone else can enjoy those kitchen tools....  Mary

 Flower box