The Kitchen Table

Back when I got the physical newspaper delivered every day, I read it at the kitchen table, and oddly enough this helped me keep my kitchen table, if not free of clutter, at least under control, since if things were piled high, reading the paper was more difficult.

However, a couple of years ago I switched to reading the paper on the tablet on weekdays, and only getting delivery on weekends (not a tangent: one day recently I heard my neighbor's paper being delivered and looked at the clock to find it was 7:18; so much for delivery guaranteed by 6). And apparently that was the tipping point, and ever since, I have regularly had trouble with the table getting out-of-control messy.

As it did recently, when I went from "getting ready for trip" to "OMG back from trip ahhhhhh" to "my head is just not right, who cares about the table." I am finally digging it out, and it's quite a relief. And a process.

A pass through the worst of it last week revealed three of the local weekly newspapers, a stack of coupons gone through, junk and junkish mail dealt with. Phew. Today, while waiting for my lunch to heat up, I started really tackling it, one segment at a time, both dusting/cleaning, and also assessing what belonged there, removing that which didn't, and thinking about how best to store things that do. Tonight, I continue, with pauses for sticky spots encountered elsewhere--like a file folder, not in the file cabinet, labeled "current medical" and containing paperwork from roughly 1998 to 2008. Mmm hmm.

Anyway, back to it!