We are finally cleaning and organizing the kitchen, which also meant going back to buy the little things that we didn't earlier, including more shelves, hidden drawers and things like these nice-looking drawer dividers made out of bamboo.
Ikea.
I don't really like buying so much from Ikea, but they make it handy with sizing, since our cupboards are from there. Everything is designed to fit well and it tends to also be practical, so it is hard to resist. However, we didn't go all Ikea, as we bought other appliances and the composite stone worktop is from a local company. But at the end of the day I don't mind where things are from, as long as they work and so far, we have been happy with the result in both form and function, and the appliances are awesome.
While we are organizing though, I know that once we are finished, I am going to end up changing things again once I have had a chance to get used to the kitchen. Little things, like where the knives go, or whether the coffee will go on the shelf or into a drawer. I want the kitchen to be convenient and smooth to use, but at least in the early days of learning, it is a process of continual improvement until my muscle memory gets used to even the "non-optimized" parts, making it feel convenient.
A good test of whether a kitchen functions well is having friends over to use it, as they will look into drawers expecting to find things in a handy space, even though they might have their own kitchens set up slightly differently. It is when they have to ask for basics that indicates, yeah, it doesn't make sense. Though, we are the ones who will be using the kitchen 99% of the time, so as long as we survive.
The organization is the fun part for me though, and when I was a kid (perhaps like many kids) I would spend many hours at times rearranging my room to make it "work better", even though it was tiny and I didn't have that much stuff to actually rearrange. There was only two places where the bed could go, and moving it to the other meant moving the desk to where the bed was. It was like a twice-yearly cycle or something, just for the change.
Change is as good as a holiday.
Which is lucky, as there is always lots of change around which comes at a cost, so there isn't a lot left over for taking holidays - nor time for holidays for that matter. Though, who needs a holiday when there is so much change to fill the time with?
There is some sarcasm in there.
Though, I do think it is better to be busy doing something useful, than bored doing nothing much. We were just talking to Smallsteps about what she wants to be when she grows up and she said a teacher of some kind that teaches math. Not so long ago though, she wanted to be a ballerina and before that, a mouse. As I said to her, no matter what she chooses now, she has the ability to change it later if she wants to explore something else, but why not a ballet dancer?
"The moves they do are too hard."
Sure, but that comes with practice and if you do something that is too easy and doesn't challenge you, you will probably end up bored, not liking what you do, but perhaps stuck doing it.
"Why stuck?"
Not so easy to explain to a six year old and you can always choose differently, but as you get older, responsibilities mount up and obligations have to be met. It is difficult to change career path and "start over" if you have a house mortgage, dependent children and a lifestyle expectation. It isn't impossible, but it makes making the decision, much harder as in most cases, it means scaling back on a lot of accustomed practices.
A long time ago, I was going to go back to university and study something different to open up my career opportunities. I was under thirty at the time, but my girlfriend was also studying and I was largely supporting both of us. The deal was that after she finishes and gets a fulltime job, I will go parttime and study on the side. Six months after she had her fulltime job, we broke up and I ended up buying her out of the loan on the apartment we owned together, so my immediate obligations went up and a return to school was no longer possible.
Stuck.
Perhaps it was for the best, as I ended up starting my own business a couple years later, which I might not have done otherwise and that led onto having two jobs and no time for holidays. But, it has allowed us to buy an old house and start renovating it, so it has also worked out okay.
Unlike the cutlery drawer at the moment, life is far messier than perhaps we would often like, but that mess takes us down paths that we wouldn't otherwise have access to or choose, even if we did have the opportunity. The randomness of changing circumstances raises opportunities that can lead us to some of the most important parts of our life, like a new career path, or the chance meeting of a future partner.
We often try to limit the change in our lives and seek for stability, but perhaps it is this tension between it and the volatility that keeps us engaged with our world, interested in living this life. Sure, there is the potential for too much drama as some seem to chase, but in there somewhere, there is an equilibrium where we can be our most active, enough volatility to force movement, enough stability to give a solid base to spring from.
With the right personal tools at our disposal, disruption becomes challenge that we can face and overcome, which keeps us closer to the edge of experience, and rather than wishing for something to happen, we can feel that we are out there, making it happen. Even if it is just a better organized kitchen.
Keep the tools in the drawer sharp.
Open the drawer and use them often.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]