Quote of the Day - 2/15/2012

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Colette once remarked that she always wanted to see her rooms crowded with flowers and her kitchen table set with whatever seasonal delights the farmers’ stalls had to offer: baskets of spotted quail eggs, yellow, noisy skinned onions, tied bunches of perfect leeks, succulent red berries. She wanted to smell the reassuring odors of good food cooking. And she always wanted her windows, their sills filled with pots of herbs and sweet geranium, to open out into the embrace of tree branches. These things gave her a sense of peacefulness. - Lee Bailey in Lee Bailey's Country Weekends  

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Recently - I seem to be focused on reducing clutter. The quote for today reminds me that some kinds of clutter are an element of a comfortable home. Today, let’s focus on positive clutter.

Colette’s flowers…seasonal delights…pots of herbs - those all are appealing.

For me, positive clutter is functional (and used often) or changes frequently. Here are some examples of positive clutter I have around me:

 

  • Handy containers for colored paperclips anywhere I may sit down with a book. I use the them to mark interesting passages and my place in books.

 

  • Little pieces of paper around my PC with numbers or reminders. They last for a day or two then are replaced by others. I like to use different colors and sizes. It makes the work area seem more personalized.

 

  • A wire basket with banana rack with onions, potatoes, garlic, bananas….any fruit or veggie that does not need refrigeration.

 

  • The variety of small canisters of tea on the shelf over the sink. We make a pot of tea every day so the contents of the canisters are always being depleted….refilled.

 

  • A deep red metal bowl filled with small containers of daily vitamins/supplements. It holds 3-5 days so sometimes it is piled high and other times it is down to one small container.

 

  • A stack of magazines/catalogs on the table - ready to be thumbed through and then recycled.

 

  • A pile of books to glean for quotes (taking out the paper clips as I glean) and return to the library (for library books) or donate to a used book charity…unless I am keeping them for reference.

 

  • A 40+ year old sewing basket next to one of my reading chairs. I do my mending there - but mending is not needed all that often. I’ve recently decided it is the best place to leave my Kindle to charge. So the sewing basket was always a positive clutter…but it recently increased its positive value.