This week I’m focusing on “How I Eat” – everything from my dishes, to the space I cook in, to what I buy and how I prepare to eat.
My process has developed a rhythm:
Pull everything out of its home and make a pile in the middle of the room
Begin to evaluate
Suddenly remember where I have stored more items in this category
Retrieve those items and add them to the pile
Begin evaluating again
Bag/box up culled pieces
Return surviving items to their homes and try to figure out how on earth they all fit before
Today is dishes – plates, cups, serving pieces, etc. and my process was the same. Empty everything from my cabinets onto the kitchen table. Remember that I have dishes stored in the basement. (I may have progressed to keeping all seasons of clothes in my room, but my dishes still swap out of basement storage from the Friday after Thanksgiving till sometime after New Year’s.) Retrieve basement dishes. Begin process again. Send children to round up the stacks of dishes stashed in their bedrooms and other places. Wait for them to wash and dry those dishes. Begin process again.
Most of the actual evaluation process centered on recognizing where I really am in this season of life. I keep 20 dinner plates in my cabinet. I had also been storing a set of inexpensive china, my Christmas dishes and assorted other pieces like the melamine plates I pull out for summer parties. I bought those 20 dinner plates because there was a time in my life when it was not uncommon to have at least that many people over for dinners and parties. Now is not that time. I think it’s been at least two years (well before Covid) since I’ve hosted more than 10 people. The only thing 20 dinner plates in my cabinet accomplishes now is helping my kids get away with stashing plates in their room for way longer than I want to think about. Especially now that we don’t have a dishwasher, I want to limit my dishes so we get in the habit of washing, drying and putting away our own dishes immediately. Well, that’s the goal, anyway. #dreamBIG.
I recently donated the china. It wasn’t something I felt like I needed to keep dedicating space to. As for the Christmas dishes, I realized over the last few years, I’ve been bringing up my dinner plates and a small sampling of other pieces – not the whole collection – to mix in with my everyday white dishes. It gives the festive touch I like without me spending a day swapping and washing an entire cabinet full of dishes. So I’m donating everything but those pieces I’ve already been prioritizing.
I’m not ready to say I’m done with larger gatherings at my house, so I kept a handful of plates and bowls in my cabinet and moved the rest to the now emptier cabinet in the basement housing my Christmas dishes.
Nothing today was earth shattering or drastic, but when I went to serve dinner tonight, I grabbed a serving bowl from the cabinet. I didn’t grab a serving bowl and remove all the bowls stacked inside it. I didn’t move something out of the way to grab the serving bowl. I just reached up and grabbed a serving bowl. That moment (and all the times it will be repeated) was worth the day’s work.
Uncovering Real 