Lately I have been tackling cluttered spaces in my house.  Some of them I use daily but don’t really ever look at (seriously I just don’t see the mess), and others like this drawer, I rarely engage.  I’m learning a lot about how I relate to my possessions.

I’m not much of a spring cleaner.

Shouldn’t this drawer have been cleaned out in April and the April before that?  Is cleaning out a kitchen drawer even on the spring cleaning list?  Dear Abby how have I lived this long and don’t know these things?  Do you clean your drawers out periodically?  I was always so busy with daily chores that deep drawer cleaning wasn’t ever on my radar.  Until people I love started dying.  Then I was suddenly overtaken by an urge to throw away everything.  For a period of time nothing mattered, and I was detached from “stuff.” Boxing it up, or chucking it out felt good.  Like maybe I could toss my freaking broken heart right along with it.

Sometimes I go all in on planning with zippo execution.

As you can plainly see from the photo above, I was going to make fancy shaped sugar cookies.  They were going to be so tasty, decorated with delicious icing that I squeezed on through plastic tips.  I had that cookie press set before I got married twenty something years ago, and I’ve never used it.  Ever.  My best excuse is that I never stumbled on a great sugar cookie recipe.  So now what?  Sell it?  Nah too much effort with too little recovery.  Throw it out?  Oh heck no.  IT’S BRAND NEW!!!  Store it downstairs in the basement until the day comes that I find a better home for it?  Yep.

I am a good-intentioned saver

I might need those cookie cutters someday ya know.  In fact, today was the day!  Kimani and I were playing with Playdoh and we needed bigger, better shape cutters.  That sent me digging into that drawer I haven’t bothered with since the last time I needed food coloring for birthday cake frosting.  You know, if I stored food coloring up in the cabinet with extracts and spices, I would not have had a reason to rifle through the decorating drawer for at least the last four years.  I mean really what was I going to make, grief cookies?  Misery cake pops?

I can’t throw good things away

Digging around in there I found the decorating suggestion sheets for cake molds I used thirteen years ago.  That drawer isn’t even thirteen years old!  We are talking about transferred paraphernalia here people.  I was going to reuse those cake pans that are stored in the basement, I swear I was!  And when I did, I was going to need those decorating instruction sheets.  But I won’t be using those cake pans again and one day I will find a new home for them.  Maybe they will go wherever the cookie press goes!  Happy baking someone I don’t know.

I used to be enchanted by my stuff

Before death came, our rooms were filled with treasures, bits and pieces of memories, hopes, proof of life – saved – as if not saving them would have been a denial, a rejection, a crime of sorts.  But the preservation of all those things didn’t save the most important thing, and just like that their power over me was lost.