Last night LeeAnn was cleaning up the kitchen. I mean cleaning the kitchen. We're getting ready to have it demolished and it has to be clean for the destruction. Actually, she's taking the opportunity to go through everything and toss anything we really don't need. During the sifting process, she handed me two anti-curling irons. One is hers, that she retired because the power cord developed a break in one of the wires. The other is one she got from my daughter-in-law Jessica who got rid of it because one of the heating elements came away from the frame. LeeAnn asked me to either merge them or toss them. I vaguely remembered promising to try this. Must be at least a couple of years ago. These items have been occupying some prime real estate on the shelf of a little side-board table in the kitchen. They are not qualified to be there as decorations and since both were, by themselves, kaputt, they were not there so they would be handy for use. In short, until I got around to them they were junk.
I took maybe 10 minutes and created one working curl smasher and tossed the leftover parts in the trash. Voila! We now have half the junk in haircare products and it's not junk. It can now get squirreled away under a hand basin or something until the primary unit gives up the ghost.
So for the want of 10 minutes we've had those two derelicts masquerading as kitchen sculpture for over two years. Every time we've walked into the kitchen, whether we realized it or not, those hair straighteners have been a part of the milieu of the most trafficked room in the house. Every time we've looked for something that we would legitimately expect to find on that table in the kitchen, we've had to sort through stuff the belongs under the bathroom washbasin in order to find it. They've added to visual "noise" in our home and, along with their brothers and sisters that are still squatting here and there and everywhere, have created a sense of clutter in our home.
I love to go to home shows and walk through the wonderful houses. I realize that part of the appeal in those places is not just the great floor plans, the impressive building materials and expert workmanship in the houses and the furnishings. It's also the fact that everything is in its place and there's no clutter. Granted, there's also not much of what it really takes to live in a place either and no one can expect a lived-in home to look like the home show every day. But I have to say; I believe that one of the greatest things I could do to contribute to a sense of gracious living in our own home would be to go on a safari and find all the busted hair straighteners and their ilk and evict them, or make them useful and then find a legitimate home for them in a place that befits their real station in our lives.
If a thing is needed in a visible and accessible place for daily living it should be as high a quality and aesthetically pleasing as we can reasonably afford. If it can't be made pleasing to look at it should be stashed somewhere out of sight. If it's needed, but rarely, it can go deep. If we really don't need it at all, it should go away.
And before we bring anything into our lives, that thing should be exposed to this set of criteria before it gets in here at all.
I took maybe 10 minutes and created one working curl smasher and tossed the leftover parts in the trash. Voila! We now have half the junk in haircare products and it's not junk. It can now get squirreled away under a hand basin or something until the primary unit gives up the ghost.
So for the want of 10 minutes we've had those two derelicts masquerading as kitchen sculpture for over two years. Every time we've walked into the kitchen, whether we realized it or not, those hair straighteners have been a part of the milieu of the most trafficked room in the house. Every time we've looked for something that we would legitimately expect to find on that table in the kitchen, we've had to sort through stuff the belongs under the bathroom washbasin in order to find it. They've added to visual "noise" in our home and, along with their brothers and sisters that are still squatting here and there and everywhere, have created a sense of clutter in our home.
I love to go to home shows and walk through the wonderful houses. I realize that part of the appeal in those places is not just the great floor plans, the impressive building materials and expert workmanship in the houses and the furnishings. It's also the fact that everything is in its place and there's no clutter. Granted, there's also not much of what it really takes to live in a place either and no one can expect a lived-in home to look like the home show every day. But I have to say; I believe that one of the greatest things I could do to contribute to a sense of gracious living in our own home would be to go on a safari and find all the busted hair straighteners and their ilk and evict them, or make them useful and then find a legitimate home for them in a place that befits their real station in our lives.
If a thing is needed in a visible and accessible place for daily living it should be as high a quality and aesthetically pleasing as we can reasonably afford. If it can't be made pleasing to look at it should be stashed somewhere out of sight. If it's needed, but rarely, it can go deep. If we really don't need it at all, it should go away.
And before we bring anything into our lives, that thing should be exposed to this set of criteria before it gets in here at all.
1 comment:
We wanted that fixed because it is amazing and costs $150 bucks!!!! Thanks!
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