Yesterday was "Unpack and Organize the Kitchen Day". After loading the garage so full of boxes Monday that there was no room for Mark's new bike rack and barely room to tuck his bikes in, Mark was feeling pretty discouraged by all the STUFF. So I brought in all the boxes marked KITCHEN and began unpacking. It's amazing how much stuff you can cram into lots of tiny spaces. And how much redundancy we have. We have 6 pieces of equipment to make coffee and 1 more to store it once it's made. We have 3 small round pyrex glass baking dishes WITH lids, we have 13 pyrex ramekins..... I could go on and on. And the sad part is that we did do some cleaning out before we moved. HELP! But I got it all in and now we are beginning to see the blue tarp on the floor of the garage. I am trying to be more aware of old habits and ideas and then think about changing them. For example, trash...... here the city provides a recycle bin and a garbage can that the truck can come by and automagically empty with a big gripper-thing that lifts and tips. The garbage can is about as big as a tall kitchen garbage can. And the recycling bin is HUGE. So, in the house, I have my tall kitchen garbage can and a small recycling bin under the sink. The goal is to ONLY have 1 bag of garbage/week and empty the recycling bin daily. I went online to read about what I could recycle. And it is alot. So now, I carefully read and sort.
The other habit I notice that Mark and I both have is going out to shop for more STUFF. Now, I have to be a bit easy on us as there does seem to be certain stuff that one needs when one moves into a new place - toilet plunger for one as we left both of ours behind (no pun intended). And of course - bucket, mops and brooms (we are BOTH Virgos after all). But I am trying hard to THINK before I BUY. Do I really NEED that thing-a-ma-bobber...... or do I just WANT it because I THINK I need it..... We went to Costco the other day looking for a wine refrigerator (more on that later). At first, I thought it would be great to have a membership. Then I looked around and most of the shoppers were parents with many children hanging off their baskets. And where would I put 12 rolls of toilet paper??? So when we didn't find a wine refrigerator, we left and felt very righteous that we didn't get the membership. But old habits are hard to break.... after all, when I couldn't find Eight O'Clock coffee anywhere here, I just went online and ORDERED some..... well, not some...... more like 23 lbs!! WHAT WAS I THINKING????? I hope our mouse house freezer can hold it all. And we are now on first name basis with our Fed Ex, Post Office and UPS drivers as Mark has gotten bike parts, a bike trailer, antenna for the TV....... We have to stop all this at some point. Now, saying that, let me explain about the wine refrigerator...... Because we have no real basement (the 5x5' bomb shelter under the house HARDLY counts as a basement), we have no good place to keep wine. And in this part of the world, you HAVE to keep wine. I think many people brush their teeth with wine. Wine is sold in EVERY store - even Target. So we decided to look for one of those wine cooler/refrigerators. I started reading about them online and so did Mark. One blog said to get a bigger one than you first planned on. So I thought - 45 bottles seemed good..... Then Mark said, "But that's not even 4 cases!". He was thinking along the lines of 84 bottles..... OMG!! And they make some that look like furniture so we wouldn't have a big stainless steel cabinet in the middle of the living room - just off to the side of it in the "dining space". So, as you can see, that old habit needs LOTS of work. Oh, and the quarter-sized burn on my hand from the stove-from-Hell is getting better. I did make a very necessary purchase and bought 2 oven mitts with gripper strips on the hands that go up to the middle of my forearms. HA HA you killer stove!!!
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