The week between Christmas and New Year is a strange time, a bit of a non-event and we feel to be held in suspension between the old and the new.  Visitors have usually gone home or, if you have been the visitor, you are back in your own space.

Unless you are planning to host a party at home there is not really much to do this week.  By now, the endless leftovers have been eaten, you have had your fill of rich food and are happy with a poached egg or a bowl of soup.  It is not yet time to take down the decorations but you are a bit tired of looking at them.

You are ready for the new year to start, you feel that life is at a standstill until the new calendar is turned over.  This is a time of restlessness, cooling your heels and just waiting for life to start again.  What to do to use up the surplus energy?  The dogs are getting lots of walks but this activity doesn’t fill the need to be active so I turn to doing a job long put on hold, that of emptying out cupboards full of clutter.

Dave started the ball rolling by completely emptying the bookshelves by his chair.  Three big shelves that, over the past year, have been the dumping ground for all manner of small items.  Originally built for the overflow of his huge book collection, the shelves are a good dumping ground for those small items that really have no proper place to go.  Business cards of anyone he has met over the year, or many years, receipts that have not made it to the drawer where we keep our accounts, odd screws that have come out of his pocket and hundreds of other little bits of stuff that may be needed for some little job.

The clean-up job took all day and required the surface of a large folding table to accomplish.  Every little item was examined to determine usefulness, bits of paper were read before discarding, and screws were put into a small container for transportation elsewhere.  Once emptied, the shelves were cleaned and then refilled with treasures, not much actually got tossed out but the result is a much tidier corner for my sweetie to occupy.

Today is my turn.  Our commercial kitchen is where I do most of our household cooking in addition to our catering preparation.  Big pots of soup and all the baking gets done out there, this means that I need very little in the way of supplies in our household kitchen.  The result of storing all baking gear outdoors means that I have lots of indoor cupboard space not needed for the usual kitchen stuff.  Does this mean empty cupboards?  Of course not!  There must be an unwritten rule that any available space has to be filled, it doesn’t matter what it is filled with, but an empty shelf is not a natural item.  As stated in a previous column, I find it difficult to actually get rid of stuff that has any sentimental meaning, or even no meaning at all.  It is a well known fact that what we toss out today, will definitely be needed tomorrow.

I have been a member of the Order of the Eastern Star for twenty five years, during that time I have been in the leader’s chair several times.   The organisation is for both men and women but the leader is a woman. The result of this is that much emphasis is put on “pretty things” and each leader has her own ideas of what to decorate with during her year.  Over the years I have collected a lot of stuff that is of no real use but may be needed for something or other in the chapter.  Finding it hard to be ruthless, over the years I have saved ribbons, bows, artificial flowers and all kinds of useless, pretty baubles.

All of this, which is the contents of two large cupboards, is currently sitting on the kitchen counters waiting for action.  I got as far as emptying and cleaning the shelves, now I sit with coffee, waiting for another attack of energy to actually start tossing stuff.  Very little of it is of any use at the thrift store, so the only place for it is the garbage.  My eleven year old granddaughter would probably enjoy some of it but I do not want to incur my daughter’s wrath by sending too much of my clutter to her home.

I know that I have to  do the deed and get rid of most of it, but it is so hard, I wonder if Dave will notice if I just put it all back and shut the doors, after all, it may come in useful some day.  Life is hard!