Yesterday I showed to the Mister this picture of a china cabinet that inspired in me a radical idea. Let me start at the beginning.
I love a clean home. I just don’t love dirtying my hands making it clean. There are a million other things I would rather do. Usually, I do them. My mother-in-law, Grandma Fern (the Mister’s most awesome grandma–Hi Fern!!), neighbors, friends, and my mom are always quick to point out that the house is far from filthy. It just looks like two very young boys live there. ;) My perfectionist nature fights their logic. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed at the impossibility of keeping it perfect that I wind up doing nothing. Not good.
So I’ve been reading up on organization and simplicity and maintaining a peaceful environment. There is a common theme with everything I’ve read. We, the dishelved, all have too much crap. Gadgets, gizmos, and gimmicks bust from our drawers and clutter our homes and minds, and according to everyone the first step is releasing from your environment everything you don’t love or need. Since coming back from vacation, I’ve been trying to purge what I can. I gave to Goodwill 95% of my closet. Next up, all the furniture that is taking up real estate in our garage.
Back to the china cabinet. It got me thinking about dishes and how much I hate to do them. We have a service for 10, and our usual routine is to pre-wash and rinse the dishes and put them in the dishwasher for a final clean. As you can imagine, we put off running the dishwasher until just before we run out of clean dishes. Then we have to unload a full dishwasher. What a boring waste of time.
We had already planned to replace our dishes this year, but what if, I asked the Mister, we replaced our dishes with a simple service for four? We are a family of four, after all. The caveat: we would have no choice but to keep up on our dishes. No more dishwasher full of plates and glasses waiting for the last minute. If we use it, we clean it. Otherwise, we don’t have anything to eat off. As luck would have it, it is easier to clean 4 dishes through out the day versus 10 all at once. The bonus is the service that once took up two-and-a-half cabinets in my kitchen will now fit on one, maybe two shelves. No more bulging cabinets.
I haven’t forgotten about guests. First of all, we’re anti-social. We never have people over. But in the event we do, that’s where the china cabinet comes in. In that I will store china, glassware, and linens for our guests. I can store artfully what we use only on occasion. Perfect.
I already have a china cabinet. It’s just a cheap old thing, but I’m going to try prettying it up. I plan on working on it in August, so I’ll be sure to post befores and afters.
So what do you think? Am I crazy? Have you done something similar, and did it work? I curious to know if I am the only one who feels weighed down by their possessions.
I love this idea but I think I am way too lazy to hand wash dishes after every meal. I too feel weighed down by our possessions.
Not sure about the dishes thing …although it’d be interesting to tell the teenagers in my house they can’t eat because there are no clean dishes (I’m not sure that would stop them) Although I think all the junk in our house is the result of too many dollar stores and dollar bins. :-)
I know it sounds radical–it’s my radical idea! ;-)
But here’s my inspiration. My parents have a place in Lake Tahoe and a timeshare in Cancun. Both places, for obvious reasons, are stocked with the bare bone essentials. And it is a DREAM to work in that kitchen! Everyone knows to wash up when you’re done with something–you have no choice if you or someone else wants to eat later! Washing one little lunch plate that you’ll use later for dinner takes no effort and you don’t even think about it.
The Mister is willing to try out my little experiment. I’ll report the findings after we start.
My other inspiration: http://chezlarsson.typepad.com/myblog/
Her house is so clean and organized, but not in a sterile way. One of her first posts was organizing the kitchen and she sparked the idea in my head of tossing out all the extras.
We’ll see!
Ahh yes – I’m in the purger’s as well. I think it often comes up when my “need” to acquire becomes too great, I get a little disgusted with myself, and thus, I look around and get rid of my existing crap instead.
I would completely support the 4-dish perspective. I live in NYC, and thus cabinet space is at a premium. I actually enjoyed being forced to have as little as possible, and I equally enjoyed doing the dishes after every meal. ML hates cleaning up the kitchen immediately following dinner, etc, but I find it calming and relaxing– for some godforsaken reason.
However, from my experience, it might be useful to have a set of 6 instead. I know when we cook and need a plate to put the raw meat on, etc, we usually end up plowing through some of our supplies — and it’s only 2 of us!
Let us know how it goes :)
Good point, Little Miss!
I don’t think I could do the dishes thing. This is sort of silly, but I really like having a few kinds of dishes to choose from. We have salad-sized plates that I often use for lunch� they have stripes around the edge in different colors. Then we have our ‘casual’ purple plates that we use most of the time. They’re thick and sort of rustic looking� er, as rustic as purple plates can be. And then we have our plain white plates that I like to for nicer meals (we don’t have fine China). But it makes me smile to pull out cute plates from the cabinet! I choose my plate based on my mood. That’s weird, huh?
Not weird! My mom has all sorts of plates to choose from, and she has several sets of fine china. The difference is my mom is a naturally organized person. Every time she makes herself lunch she washes everything she’s used (including plates, cutlery, etc.) and puts it all away. I am not like that. I rinse it all in the sink and then leave it there, neatly, and wait for a house gnome to take care of it. Since the gnome has yet to come, one of us loads it into the dishwasher when whatever is in the sink can no longer be stacked neatly.
Just in case I wasn’t clear–it would be a service/setting for four (or six): salad plates, bowls, plates, etc. The silverware remains the same. I’d spend my day at the sink washing knives if I limited myself to four.
They do it in Europe and Argentina, so I know it can be done. I just need to modify my thinking.
I would definitely go with the service for 6 so that in the event you break one you have an extra, Mikey has a friend over and you don’t have to break out the good China, etc.
You know that I just went through this purging session when we moved to a much smaller home. I really don’t miss a single thing we got rid of and am still purging items I find we don’t use now that we have moved. I’m all for it and wish you the best, it’s very freeing.
For years now my husband has been trying to convince me that we only need two dishes, two bowls, two glasses, and two sets of silverware. Okay, he’s a bit extreme. But when we moved, I packed up our ugly Mikasa dishes that I inherited from my grandmother (along with any misfit pieces I had) and bought a simple white service of 4 from Crate and Barrel.
I feel so good about it! Now we HAVE TO keep up with dishes. Thank goodness, since our sink is really small. Plus I have so much extra cabinet space! I highly recommend the purge.
Hurray for Melissa! Thanks for the feedback. :)
p.s. I have to tell everyone about your new blog. It is too awesome.
I can’t wait to hear how this works out for you! I’m all about clearing clutter. I wish we had the absolutely minimum of stuff possible and to keep this from happening, i keep telling the husband we’re never going to live in a big place because we’ll just want to buy more stuff to fill it!
Okay, I�m trying to compose myself, because this topic of shedding the crap in our lives gets me all a-tither. About a year ago I had an epiphany that we had too much stuff and that we relied too heavily on things to make us happy. I even got to the point that I was embarrassed by all of the stuff we had (especially the kids) that we absolutely did not need. It all started when I read a book about living simply (I�d give you the title and author but I can�t remember it and in the thrill of shedding my excess material belongings, I got rid of it.) I was going through a period where I was beginning to resent the fact that I was living a lifestyle that society had set up as being the �right� one. Why was I working so hard and sending my kids to daycare everyday (not a judgement on anyone, I�m still doing it)? Anyway this book turned me onto a movement called �voluntary simplicity�.
Basically the idea is to make a lifestyle shift by choosing to minimize the ‘more-is-better’ pursuit of wealth and consumption. Adherents choose simple living for a variety of reasons, such as spirituality, health, increase in ‘quality time’ for family and friends, stress reduction, conservation, social justice or anti-consumerism (see wikipedia). For me it was about taking control of something in a life that felt out of control and on a track I felt obligated to follow for some warped reason. This isn�t about turning into a hippie, collecting cans to pay the bills or shaking up on a commune. Voluntary simplicity is different for each person, because it is based on individual values.
I could go on, but this is the comments section of your blog and I already feel like a pain in the ass. Okay, I am getting off my soapbox now.
To chime in on the dishes dilemma, this is what I did: I got rid of everything but our everyday dishes (admittedly a service for 12, but it seems to work out okay). I got rid of the everyday silverware and starting using my �good� silver plate for every day. Everything can go in the dishwasher except the knives, but I wash my cooking knives by hand anyway so that works out as well. When I entertain, I rent everything: dishes, glasses, flatware, coffee cups, the works. This is awesome. It is really inexpensive and the best part is you get to return them dirty! You just put them back in the dishwashing rack they came in and take them back (some places will even come and pick them up).
Again, sorry for the diarrhea of the keyboard.
Marcy, I could have written your comment for you. I have that book on voluntary simplicity, so I know what you’re talking about. It’s not about making sandals out of hemp and eating native plants from the backyard. It’s about finding what you value, and putting it first. What you value very often has nothing to do with material possessions, but even if one of those things is a Rolex, for example, that’s ok. :)
I never thought about renting. What an idea!