234: What Happens After the Basic Habits are Under Control? Leave a comment

:/ and also 🙂

So I’m on like, Day 2.5, and everything is fine so far, dishes clean, yay! But after doing all my dishes, I decided that I wanted to do something I havent been able to do in years. Because I only have 1 counter in my kitchen, and it’s normally full of dirty dishes, I haven’t made Christmas cookies in at least 6 years… according to the expiration date on my vanilla extract.

SO … I checked the drawer where I used to store my cookie cutters, and they weren’t there. I’m the kinda person that whenever a drawer won’t close, I grab whatever my eyes fall on that I don’t think I really need and throw it in the trash. Yes, the trash. Nobody wants to buy the junk in my house.

So I assumed I had decluttered my cookie cutters and decided to go out and buy a new set, plus all the ingredients for the cookies, and a new set of baking trays to replace the ones i scrubbed for 20 minutes that still felt sticky once they were dry. Those are now in the trash as well.

When I got home, I put away all the ingredients, folded up the target bags and opened up the drawer where I keep disposable shopping bags, and a glint of metal caught my eye……….. there were my cookie cutters! Cue the eyeroll… but now I’m in a dilemma!

The first place I looked for my cookie cutters was the drawer in my microwave cart. Slob logic says that’s where I should now store them… but that drawer is full of things that go in that drawer. Plastic silverware and straws, pancake rings, those rubber things for opening jars. It’s full of stuff I use often, because it’s in a prime real estate area of my kitchen. There’s no room there for any cookie cutters, either the halloween ones I found, or the snowmen that I bought. (I remembered having some cookie cutters, but didn’t remember which holiday they were for. Very me.)

I tried to declutter some of the stuff from that drawer, but I really do use that stuff daily, and I haven’t used cookie cutters in years until today. I was only able to throw away a couple napkins and move a random box of pudding to the pantry.

There’s plenty of room in the drawer i use for disposable bags, cause we are the rare couple that actually use more of those than we bring home, (I even end up buying tiny trash bags sometimes) but should I put the cookie cutters back into a drawer where I literally just lost them TODAY?

A second, unrelated thing… when I went to check my spice cupboard above the stove for food coloring, EGADS! It was nasty. I said a silent thank you to my Mother in Law who recently bought me a really high quality step ladder as an early Christmas present. No more standing on wobbly barstools to change lightbulbs for me! Woot! It was amazing and made it so easy to clean out that cupboard.

I followed the rules, mostly. Obvious trash went first. I chucked about half the stuff in there. Then, I switched out my ‘spice box’… I like to keep my spices in a cardboard box. The spice bottles are small and end up pushed to the back where I can’t see them. Then I end up re-buying stuff I already have. So now i put all my spices in a box so I can just pull out the whole box while I’m cooking and put the whole thing back when I’m done. The Maruchan brand 12 pack ramen boxes are exactly the right size for my spice cupboard, but the one I was using was grimy, so I switched it for a new one. I had a box in my pantry with just 2 packets of ramen left in it. But I couldn’t just put the clean box back into that cupboard, cause it was genuinely gross. So I pulled everything out, (I know I’m not supposed to do this) cleaned out the cupboards, and put it all back. I was able to put my foil and plastic wrap in long-ways! So much more space! And without the foil box sticking out, I can even close the spice cupboard doors!

Maybe I could use a second ramen box for my cookie decorating supplies and cookie cutters and store it up there too? I might not think to check the spice cupboard for cookie cutters, but it’s 100% the first place I look for food coloring, piping bags, and sugar sprinkles, and those are all cookie baking supplies too.

Thoughts?