a cup of clutter

[adrian_turtle]

For many years, I've been using the same old set of white plastic measuring cups. The measurements are marked on the handles in raised letters, white on white, and somehow they've gotten harder to read over the years. It's weird, because the cups are discolored enough that there's now a little color contrast when there used to be none at all. But my eyes have deteriorated enough that I find myself confusing the 1/3 and the 1/2 cup measures. Then I have to re-calculate the proportions in the middle, which means extra spoons. (Literally. And dishwashing. And feeling like an idiot.)

So, finally, I bought nice new measuring cups this winter! I saved them for Passover, thinking I would carefully clean my kitchen and change over all the dishes and bake nice things that would be kosher for Passover*. And then after the holiday, I could use them for regular flour and such. (Let next Passover worry about itself.) As it happened, last week I didn't feel like baking anything more complicated than a potato, which does not require measuring cups.

This morning I rearranged my kitchen to the configuration it has 51 weeks a year, with the Passover dishes in the cabinet I can't reach. I put the new measuring cups in the drawer by the sink, and looked at the old measuring cups. Should I throw them away? Maybe I should keep them. Sometimes it's useful to have 2 measuring cups the same size and use one for wet and one for dry. But the old ones are hard for me to use, which means they don't work very well. But it's not like they really don't work. I can use them for backup if I need to...

This, THIS, is why my apartment is so cluttered. This, in a nutshell (or at least nested in a measuring cup), is why I can't get rid of anything. It worries me.



*The rigor of my kitchen-cleaning and dishes-changing varies from year to year. This year was very sloppy. Oh well. Nobody who cares eats from my kitchen during Passover.

Comments

[anne]

Same! I had a burst of terror after cleaning out Parenthome, and I managed to take a lot of stuff to the thrift store. (But what if I need it? A different and therefore interesting terror!) (No, I'm not completely convinced either. But it's a start.)

[adrian_turtle]

Oh, I am having nightmares about these things after visiting my mother's house this winter. Because she doesn't want to get rid of anything and the place is dangerously cluttered and I'm afraid of ending up like her.

One piece of advice that turns up a lot about decluttering is that you should get the stuff out the door after deciding to get rid of it. Don't keep it around for ages and second-guess yourself. But now (thinking about stuff other than little plastic measuring cups) the thrift stores are closed. There's just the box of "I should get rid of it when conditions permit" cluttering up the living room until I tidy up and reshelve the books...

[anne]

I have five shopping bags full. It's awful. But I took a couple of tees out and I'm cutting them in strips for mask ties, so I guess it's not all bad.

[mrissa]

The thrift store is an excellent plan, because you're not wasting the thing, you're sharing the thing, and that can be much easier to deal with.

[anne]

In my case, it's a very old habit, because my church runs the biggest one in my home town. (The First Methodists do the estate sales.)

We won't go into how I found stuff at Parenthome that I know perfectly well I told my mom to donate. It got there eventually, that's what counts, and now it's even vintage as opposed to just old!

[adrian_turtle]

I was with my mother for 4 days. I got one item off the premises. Well, two. She made matching dresses for a little girl and a doll, back in 1973. I managed to send them both to Virginia, along with some packing material. Why put bubble-wrap around cloth? To get the bubble-wrap, at least that piece of bubble wrap, out of the house.

[anne]

❤️ it's so hard!

[adrian_turtle]

I'm not sure it's easier for me to deal with. Maybe "differently hard," because it brings up all the logistics questions about how to get the stuff to the thrift store. It's been a long time since I decided I didn't need all those nice dishes that were given to me as wedding presents. What's hard is figuring out if there's any point selling them on ebay (but how to ship them?) or if I'm going to give them to the thrift store how can I get them there? Obviously none of this is happening this spring, but even when thrift stores are open and the city isn't in quarantine, the thrift store is 2 buses away and I can't lift much. "Deal with the damn dishes" was one of the things I was going to do when I had some time. And of course I can't...they just sort of go back and forth between the cabinet and the box on the dining room floor.

[anne]

I have a car and two functional, if weak, arms. If the dishes are in smallish boxes I can lift them.

[adrian_turtle]

I may take you up on that someday, when quarantine is fully over. They're really nice dishes, and I see them being listed on ebay for non-trivial amounts of money. $50 for a place setting...but that's including shipping, and it's such a pain to pack what with the teacups, and is that the list price or do people actually pay it? And is anybody ever going to have fancy dinner parties again?

[anne]

Craigslist? Idk. You have some time to think about it, I guess. :-/