plans, easy kitchen declutter

I expect to be spending the next couple of days dealing with the clearing of my mother's old apartment, figuring out what she needs in the new (much) smaller apartment, what needs to be kept and stored in her storage unit, and what I must find a new home for. Today is the delicate task of working on her papers - her writing and her saved paper items are her most precious Stuff and of course the source of her most pernicious disorder and clutter. And because I keep running across family things, it is a difficult task emotionally for me - Mom's poetry and writing is primarily about nature and our family, there are love-letters from my late father to my mother, written in the 40s, his old i.d., his writing,too....


But I am not going to let that task derail my own decluttering!

I still have the organizing of my important paperwork to do. This is the only thing I have procrastinated on in the last two weeks and it feels like a huge weight hanging over my head. Never mind that I am determined this year to NOT get an extension on income taxes, to get them finished by April 15.

I also feel I need to do some of the mental preparation work in Marilyn Paul's book - really work on the visualization and affirmation exercises, so that I have a very clear picture to call on of what I want my life to look like.

That's a lot of things to do that won't have a big visual effect, and I like that visual effect of my efforts. So I'm also going to work on a couple of clutter spots that won't be very difficult, but will give me that frisson of pleasure and encouragement to view:

This is a small shelf in my kitchen/dining room.
Ever since the kids were little, I've kept a little nature table scene a la Waldorf education classrooms/homes. There seems to be a great deal of dust in this gnome house and a giant can of raisins seems to have landed in the gnome's front yard (look closely and you can see him standing next to it.)

On the shelves below is a motley mixture of new and old food items, spices, nuts - I'm sure there is dried fruit in those containers that is many, many years old.

In the same area, here is another kitchen catch-all spot which goes from bananas and honey and table linens to a shelf of kitchen towels and spices to a shelf of tools and a good supply of baking soda.

It's a beautiful golden sunny day here in Indiana!

'zann