Number 3 on the Hit Parade - Volume One

There are three black holes of clutter in my house. Number one on this hit parade is the garage. I don’t have the strength or the inclination to even think about cleaning that yet. It will have to wait until I have help from either my husband or a small army of robots. Number two is the very large hall closet. It is full of books, holiday decorations and the detritus of my almost 30 years of living in this house. Again, I don’t have the strength or inclination to begin that project. My lower kitchen cabinets are the third black hole. Fortunately, I have tons of storage space in my kitchen. Unfortunately, I have been storing for 30 years and have created a disaster. Do I have the strength and inclination to begin the kitchen cabinet purge? No! But, remember the bread machine from blog dated 1-26-09? It is still sitting on the cabinet waiting for its fate to be determined. I can’t make bread until I find the instruction manual that came with it and I think the instruction manual is in one of the kitchen cabinets. So I gathered my strength and broke down the task into small increments. So, today’s task was one shelf in one half of one cabinet (there are eight sets of lower cabinets in the kitchen). This is what I uncovered in the piece of today's black hole:

• an electric knife, in its original box - KEEP



• a rather antique-looking flour sifter - since I don't foresee sifting flour in my future -DONATE



• an Inertia Nutcracker purchased at a garage sale because daughter #2 has pecan trees in her yard and I was hoping she would give me some pecans. I will KEEP this in hopes that she reads this and gives me some next year.



• a hand-held electric mixer - KEEP



• 9 aprons - aprons are worn at my house once a year when daughters help me cook Christmas dinner - 3 DONATE, 2 RELOCATE (child-sized aprons to be saved for future grandchildren), 4 KEEP



• a tea towel someone brought me as a souvenir from Ireland and for some reason I felt I shouldn't use it (was I saving it for a special occasion that would call for "Irish Family Names" tea towel?) - USE



• a food scale - KEEP on the outside chance that I might one day weigh and measure my food



• a coffee bean grinder - KEEP



• a yellow index box full of cards I developed after reading a book called Sidetracked Home Executive that promised to show me the way to a clean and organized home -this is a no-brainer - TRASH



• a gallon-size Ziploc bag containing: Tupperware labels, a Tupperware lettuce corer, corn-on-the-cob holders, a honey dripper, a measuring spoon for liquid medicine, a melon-baller, a cheese knife, 3 church keys, 3 grapefruit spoons, a silver-plate baby spoon, 2 demitasse spoons, and 2 teaspoons - I haven't needed any of this in years so everything is going to the TRASH, except the grapefruit spoons, the baby spoon, the melon-baller and the church keys (who knows when I may need to enter a church?)



• a clay pot made by one of my children - KEEP, of course



• a cute scratch-pad with a magnet on the back - KEEP



• 4 two-pocket folders bulging with loose (and yellowing) recipes cut out of magazines, newspapers, or written on slips of paper by neighbors, friends and relatives - KEEP I can't bring myself to get rid of these until I go through them, some of them belonged to my mother. These are now in a large Banana Republic shopping bag sitting in my office (aka daughter #2's room).



• 17 cookbooks (this is only half a shelf, remember?) The cookbook purge is very difficult for me. Some I am going to save until I can look through, some I won't be able to part with: The Pooh Party Book (as in Winnie the Pooh!) - KEEP (put with children's books), Feed Me I'm Yours and The Taming of the C.A.N.D.Y. Monster - KEEP (put with children's books), Cooking the Watkins Way - REVIEW, a Kamp Kaleidoscope cookbook from Daughter #1's childhood -TRASH (unless she reads this and tells me to save it for her), a Sears Meals in Minutes cookbook - TRASH, Food Editor's Favorite Desserts - REVIEW, Reader's Digest Eat Better, Live Better - DONATE, The Book of Appetizers - REVIEW, Favorite Potato Recipes from Betty Crocker - KEEP, Weight Watchers Quick Success Program Cookbook - REVIEW, Favorite Brand Name Recipes - REVIEW, Entertaining in Texas - KEEP (this is one of those "tried & true" cookbooks), Favorite Recipes From the Kitchens of Holy Family Parishioners - REVIEW, Victoria Junior Woman's Club Cookbook Spring 1975 (run off on a mimeograph and covered in yellow floral contact paper, tied with yellow yarn) - REVIEW, My First Cookbook - KEEP (put with children's books), a two-volume set of Meta Given's Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking copyright 1947 - KEEP - I will never be able to get rid of these books, they were a wedding present to my parents in 1956 from my great-aunt Louise (the gift card is still scotch-taped to the front cover).



• 2 books on organization: Getting Organized and The Sidetracked Sisters Catch-Up on the Kitchen. If these books had worked I wouldn't be doing a blog on purging one's home of "stuff" - DONATE



• Instruction manuals for my microwave, dishwasher, cook top, oven, coffee maker, and mini-refrigerator (that may or may not be at daughter #2's house) - KEEP - but move to file cabinet to folder marked "instruction manuals".



• 2 index card boxes full of recipes - KEEP - until I have a chance to look through them



• a large box of wooden kitchen matches - KEEP - they are kitchen matches, what better place for them?

Alas, my foray into the black hole did not result in finding the instruction manual for the bread machine. This probably means I'll have to go on another expedition tomorrow.