Simplicity.

(Tine K Home. See more HERE)

Yesterday I showed to the Mister this picture of a china cabinet that inspired in me a radical idea. Let me start at the beginning.

I love a clean home. I just don't love dirtying my hands making it clean. There are a million other things I would rather do. Usually, I do them. My mother-in-law, Grandma Fern (the Mister's most awesome grandma--Hi Fern!!), neighbors, friends, and my mom are always quick to point out that the house is far from filthy. It just looks like two very young boys live there. ;) My perfectionist nature fights their logic. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed at the impossibility of keeping it perfect that I wind up doing nothing. Not good.

So I've been reading up on organization and simplicity and maintaining a peaceful environment. There is a common theme with everything I've read. We, the dishelved, all have too much crap. Gadgets, gizmos, and gimmicks bust from our drawers and clutter our homes and minds, and according to everyone the first step is releasing from your environment everything you don't love or need. Since coming back from vacation, I've been trying to purge what I can. I gave to Goodwill 95% of my closet. Next up, all the furniture that is taking up real estate in our garage.

Back to the china cabinet. It got me thinking about dishes and how much I hate to do them. We have a service for 10, and our usual routine is to pre-wash and rinse the dishes and put them in the dishwasher for a final clean. As you can imagine, we put off running the dishwasher until just before we run out of clean dishes. Then we have to unload a full dishwasher. What a boring waste of time.

We had already planned to replace our dishes this year, but what if, I asked the Mister, we replaced our dishes with a simple service for four? We are a family of four, after all. The caveat: we would have no choice but to keep up on our dishes. No more dishwasher full of plates and glasses waiting for the last minute. If we use it, we clean it. Otherwise, we don't have anything to eat off. As luck would have it, it is easier to clean 4 dishes through out the day versus 10 all at once. The bonus is the service that once took up two-and-a-half cabinets in my kitchen will now fit on one, maybe two shelves. No more bulging cabinets.

I haven't forgotten about guests. First of all, we're anti-social. We never have people over. But in the event we do, that's where the china cabinet comes in. In that I will store china, glassware, and linens for our guests. I can store artfully what we use only on occasion. Perfect.

I already have a china cabinet. It's just a cheap old thing, but I'm going to try prettying it up. I plan on working on it in August, so I'll be sure to post befores and afters.

So what do you think? Am I crazy? Have you done something similar, and did it work? I curious to know if I am the only one who feels weighed down by their possessions.