This is my seriously scary (though less so now, thank you chorewars…) kitchen of doom.

It’s open to both the living and dining room, and as such, the clutter from the living room (also known as “the husband’s work crap”) spills over into it via the channel under the cupboards.  Not to mention the fact that we have to keep everything on the counters rather than under them, in those bottom cupboards/drawers, because there is a serious Mouse Problem in there.  As in, anything we put in there becomes an immediate Mouse House, replete with ripped up bits of insulation and lots and lots of the nastiest poo pellets you can imagine.

I wish I was exaggerating.  I’m not.  We’ve tried glue traps and poisons and everything short of locking a live cat in them.  Doesn’t phase them.  They are the UBERMICE, genetically engineered with the intelligence of Einstein and the flexibility of Rubber Man.  They are sneakier than …uh…something really sneaky.  And OH MY GOD THEY POOP A LOT.  One would think they would die just from overpooping, but nooooo.

We are powerless.  We gave up our cupboards after the first set of 24 (!!!) glue traps came back with one to two mice apiece in them, and STILL we have mice.  One day, they will carry off one of the dogs to be their servant.  When we complain about this little mouse issue to our landlords (aka “the inlaws”), they tell us it’s because we live in the country and there’s nothing they (or we) can do about it.

Gee.  Thanks.

I clean things with bleach.  A lot.  For a reason.  *shudder*

All mice aside, though:  there are some other things to be done. That piece of fabric hanging there on the wall next to the windows is a test to see how the fabric looks in various light.  Under it is an open cabinet where we keep the kitchen towels and the mugs, since it’s mouse-free up there.  I’ve picked one of the two to make a curtain to hide the clutter, and the other fabric will be the curtains for the window.  Right now, there’s just a little swag thing, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but doesn’t look so hot.  (The whole lower floor gets very little light, so I was reluctant to cover the window too much.)

I’d like to also do something with the cabinets.  Paint them, restain them, something.  They’re that sexy 1970’s dark wood that sucks up the light and doesn’t even remotely match the countertops, which are blondewood-toned melamine or whatever that stuff is that artificial countertops are made of.  They’re also dirty as hell from sitting unwashed for a zillion years before we moved in.

We need a backsplash behind the sink.  One of the window trim pieces fell off the window god only knows when, and has been long gone since before we moved in, so I’m thinking about putting steel of some sort behind there, all the way up to the window.  Easy to clean, and relatively practical for the times when I’m working with dye and splash it on the wall.  There are blue spots in my yellow paint there now.  Go figure.

The cabinets on the right are starting to sag, too, so we need some kind of brace support on the nearest-to-the-camera side.  You can’t see it well in this picture, but they’re pulling away from the ceiling a little, which is kind of scary.

And the big thing I want to do is get a hanging pot holder dealie for the ceiling.  Hang a light or two from it (the one light over the sink doesn’t work, which is why the torchiere is in our kitchen), and get all the pots and pans out of the cabinets, freeing up space for some of the clutterybits that reside on the countertops.  I think it’ll work — we’ve got 12′ ceilings in the whole first floor of the house.

Oh, and the floor.  OMG, the floor.  If we were staying here for longer than just a few years, I’d soooo get a new floor.  That cracked lineoleum that’s flaking all over the place?  Nasty.  Nasty to the point of being repulsive.  I try not to think about it too much.  Maybe I’ll get a big 5′ x 8′ rug at some point, maybe sisal or something, to cover the majority of it up.  The edges are all caked with waxed-on dirt, since the mother-in-law person used to use wax cleaners on the thing, virtually ensuring that the resultant mud would be cemented on for all eternity.  (No, seriously.  20 year old wax is like hardened glue — there is not a cleaner/wax remover/stripper/anything that will take off the muddy wax buildup.  It is now a feature of the house, and may be the only thing holding the kitchen together.  I have a secret fear that, if I was to find the magical floor-cleaner that would turn back time and remove it, the whole house would collapse like a house of cards.  And it’s probably not all that unfounded.)

That said, I’m still decluttering like a MAD FIEND.  Got rid of another four garbage bags’ worth of stuff since the Big Closet Clear-Out of 2008, in fact.  Almost 400 items out the door, ranging from old button packages to paper files that are out of date and/or unnecessary, to lamps that don’t work….and everything inbetween.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the Quakers, or the Religious Society of Friends.  While I don’t consider myself all that much of a Religious Sort(tm), the basic tenets of caring for the earth, caring for each other, and living simply really, really appeal to me.  I used to think I wanted a big house with lots of space, and now that we have one, it’s really kind of a pain in the ass.  There’s always something that needs doing, and having lots of space means needing a lot of stuff to fill it up, and while the acquiring of Varied And Sundry Crap isn’t all that hard for me to do, I don’t think it’s healthy having all this stuff around me all the time.

I know, I know.  Be grateful for the abundance.  And I am.  But there’s abundance and then there’s excess, and the two are profoundly different things.  We’ve been to the Excess point for a long time now, and when I started de-acquiring things to the dumpster or to friends, or selling off the excess in various venues, I’m noticing I have more energy.  A *lot* more energy, even.  It’s like I can start to breathe again, which I think I’ve said before, but it’s true — when there’s Too Much, the walls close in and I don’t know what to do next. It’s the paradox of choice — Choice is good; too many choices are confusing and disheartening.

Just in the past six months, I’ve gone through and gotten rid of just about 75% of most of my major clutterpoints:  yarn and craft supplies, clothing, kitchen junk, books.  People look at me like I might actually be insane when I tell them I sold off 75% of my yarn, and like I have lobsters sprouting from my ears when I tell them that more than half my books are gone now.

But seriously here — with the money that I got from selling off my yarn, I bought upgrades for my Other business.  Stuff we really needed, that made our lives easier and our work more enjoyable.  With the space in my kitchen created from ditching all the old stuff, I’ve been able to get a bunch of stuff off the counters that we DO use, which equates to more space to actually COOK in there, which equals a Happier Husband and a healthier way of life for us both.  (McDonald’s is evil.  Cooking at home means I know exactly what’s in that food we’re eating.)  And now, with the books (which is where I lose a lot of people who can’t imagine every decluttering their libraries) being sold as used on Amazon…I’m using that credit (which is considerable, let me tell you.) to buy things for the house, as well as buying books that I’m actually going to read.  (And once they’re read, they’ll go back up on Amazon as used, trust me.)  I’m actually finally getting a new comforter for the bed, a coffeemaker that doesn’t leak water all over my counters, and some baking stuff I’ve needed for a long time, AND that loaf pan I was obsessing over a few months ago — for essentially *free*.

AND I get the FREE SPACE.

It really IS kind of awesome, even if the whole decluttering thing gives some people fits.

My things ARE NOT ME. I’ve known that, intellectually, for quite some time now.  But knowing it in your head and knowing it in your heart — that’s two different animals.  The crap I surround myself with is supposed to reflect me, us, our lives together…or it’s supposed to be functional, allowing us to live our lives.  It’s not a substitute for life, or a replacement for having a life.  It’s not part of me — if it was ALL gone, I would still be me (and me with a clean slate, no less).

Realizing that fact has made it about a zillion times easier to shovel out from under the protective blanket of Crap that’s made its way into my life.  And once it’s gone, I think I might actually be even more willing to make a LIFE rather than a STOCKPILE.

Subject change:

Remember the scary picture of the tub a few days ago?  The one where the tin man crawled into my bathroom to rot and rust?

I got out the heavy-duty chemicals yesterday, and dumped a bunch of it in the tub.  I haven’t done the walls yet, but I rubbed a little bit of it on them so you could see the difference, for contrast.  (I’m doing those today.  It’s a multi-day job, since those chemicals can burn off your eyebrows if you’re exposed for too long.)

There really *is* porcelain-colored plastic under all that rust.

Who knew?

It’ll take today’s wall wipedown and tomorrow’s once-more-with-feeling on the tub itself with the Evil Chemicals Of Doom, but then I’ll have my tub back, thankfully.

Note to self:  broken or not, it needs a once-over at LEAST once a week, probably more often.

Does anyone know if waxing the walls will help prevent the iron from sticking?  I heard that somewhere — that a thin layer of TurtleWax would keep them from turning into Orange Iron Central, but I’m reluctant to try it if it means I have to then wash wax off the walls, too.

Back to the declutterybits.