Kitchen Progress

One of my very first posts on this blog was a rant about my kitchen. It was stuffed to the gills! Not only was all of my cabinetry filled to overflowing but I had things stacked on top of more things in there!

I've mentioned a bit of progress here and there but overall I didn't feel it was a huge amount to brag about but today I am astounded at the progress I have actually made! Previously it felt like I was simply rearranging the stuff I have but today I can see that I am truly making a reduction in the things I possess!

After eliminating the sugar tub, then taking that tub to liberate the even larger rice tub, I realized that there was a huge amount of unused space in my pantry.

Since the goal is to have all of my non-refrigerated food to reside in this pantry I began work moving some things in there to fill the empty space.

The pantry is filled again but there is amazing progress! No longer do I have large tubs of food sitting beside my refrigerator:

From A Journey to Simplicity

Instead that huge area is empty space now between my stove and refrigerator! The giant rice tub (the bottom one) is greatly reduced and is now in a container half that size, now located within my pantry.

The pantry doesn't look much different now:
Then:

From A Journey to Simplicity
And now:


BUT the magic is not there--it is in the two overhead cabinets that I have emptied!


These two cabinets will be used to store towels and stuff that have overflowed to the top of my refrigerator, and there should be room to spare!

This shows me that I am not working in vain. There is progress happening in my life. I am managing to eliminate the dross, I am making progress.

I now have a place to stick my trash can--Yay!!!!

Ah, the ideas are just rushing through my head as I type this! To know that this is not all for naught, to know that I am succeeding--it feels so wonderful!

My life has always seemed like a journey of more steps backward than I actually take forward, and to know that I can do this, that I AM doing this--I just cannot express how incredible it feels!

At times no matter how hard I try I just want to lay down and cry in frustration. At times it feels as if I will be tripping over this junk into the next life and I wonder if I should just give up, especially when I have to upset someone by refusing this trying to explain that.... So many people in my life just do not understand WHY I want to pare down and simplify and I try to explain but--I'm just not very good at it...

This makes me feel so good.