The great 'Who Needs It' - Challenge #1

(The WHYs are coming. I promise. I have been thinking about it a lot).

Challenge #1 = Fessing up. Below is my version.

I didn't really know SRB. She was Bunny's friend and left great comments on her blog, but I had not followed her before. But then Bunny posted about the Who Needs It challenge, which meant I clicked over to SRB's site and you can imagine what came next. LOVE. Maybe hyperbolic, but STRONG LIKING.

SRB is inviting us, ever lovingly and peacefully, to join her on a de-cluttering adventure. She wants to start with her house (and ours) and move on to her heart. A woman after mine, I say.

It turns out, I have major issues with clutter. Major. And my husband is worse than me. So, we make a fine pair. The only thing is that he isn't bothered at all by his mountains of disorganized shit, and  I AM (by mine and his). And I have been acutely aware of how much the stuff weighs on my psyche. It's like a glom-filled alien that is sucking the life right out of me (maybe more like a zombie eating my brain). I spend so much time noticing the clutter and zero time doing anything about it.*

So this is my entry, just under the wire, of Challenge #1.

There are several areas of my home that are cluttered. My home is more clutter than harmony. I think I could create the world's most boring blog post if I tried to list everything here. I'll start small, with the two shelves flanking the window in the dining room.

Right side

What you see here: plants, cookbooks, plastic bag full of baby proofing stuff, a hot plate thingy, a soda stream (vital to our well being), a bunch of meds for Chicken that we didn't use hiding behind the soda stream, 2 shelves full of Gummy's formula/eating apparel (bottles, caps, nipples, formula, prunes!, spoons, containers, utensils), random candleholders, cypress oil used at Christmas to make it smell Christmassy, the candle-holder-given-to-me-by-Northern-Lad's-parents-a-million-years-ago-but-oh-my- do-I-love-it. Top shelf has vases, a few candles and a picture.

Left side

On this side, you see: world's messiest basket of teas, crappy coffee maker because our good one broke and mommy and daddy cannot get through the day without brown formula, Music Together Flute CD case, radio/CD player, pot overfilled with extension cords and rechargeable batteries, hot plate holders, wooden mortar and pestle, small bowls/tea cups, 2 extremely worn down teapots, one sauce boat (for people who mostly eat vegetarian at home. Don't ask why I put it on the wedding registry). On the 3rd shelf there is a wine jug that I use to make smoothies, a crystal decanter, 7 of the 12 riedel wine glasses we got at our wedding. On the 4th shelf lives a pottery bean pot given to us by the in-laws, a couple of beer steins that are used twice a year, 2 champagne flutes that my husband got at his high school graduation (1992) that he insists on keeping, 2 small wine glasses given to us by VIA Rail on the occasion of travelling by train for our honeymoon. Top most shelf has a ceramic flower vase and a great pottery salad bowl given to us by Oat's parents.

Phew! Even my description of the stuff is cluttered.

And then, there is this

Our kitchen is a great one if you happen to be a single person who hates to cook. Our family has two adults who like to cook, a cat who likes to hang out in the kitchen and a Gummy Girl who is just on the brink of being on the move. We would love to have a pantry big enough to put our food (we have endless jars of legumes and grains), but we don't. Hence, what you see above. Just 45 minutes ago, Gummy was bum scootching her way over there to inspect those different flours we have stored in bins. It is about to get messy and dangerous. I want all those things to either disappear or be stored on those shelves seen above. And somehow not look cluttered? Right.

To review:

1) The clutter is like a zombie - endangering my life
2) The clutter is tempting Gummy - endangering my child's life

So there's my motivation.

Other areas, in no particular order:

• Kitchen cupboards - all of them
• living room coffee tables
• front hall external closet and hooks
• bathroom shelf 
• bedroom closet

  

  Bunny, if you want to reconsider our
  friendship, I will understand.

• upstairs hallway linnen closet (the door barely closes) 
• The Study (Oh, the study - it is one inchoate mass of stuff in there, which is why I avoid it like the plague and only dump things I don't know where else to put. To prove this, here's my desk

• 

• And finally, the basement. The basement didn't get to be photographed because it is too ugly down there. If all the other areas/rooms in the house are chapters in a book, the basement is the Encyclopedia Britannica. 

So, I've fessed up. It's hard. I feel like you will read this post and like me less. My house is messy. I don't have my shit together (or my shit has me by the collar). But at least I'm real. I'll give challenge #2 a go in a few days. But I wanted to start here.  

*Because it's all Gummy all the time