Tag Archives: kitchen

Kitchen Project – Silver and Linens

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Ironing is a bit like cooking.
You can certainly live without doing it,
but you occasionally suspect that
the time you save isn’t worth
what you sacrifice.
What you give up is this:
a small, but indelible act of grace.

~ Monica Nassif in Laundry, The Spirit of Keeping Home



The fact that you are a Christian should show
in some practical area of a growing
creativity and sensitivity to beauty,
rather than in a gradual drying up of creativity,
and a blindness to ugliness.

~  Edith Schaeffer in The Hidden Art of Homemaking

It is scarcely surprising then, that so many people
imagine housekeeping to be boring,
frustrating, repetitive, unintelligent drudgery.
I cannot agree.
Each of its regular routines brings satisfaction
when it is completed. These routines echo the rhythm of life,
and the housekeeping rhythm is the rhythm of the body.
You get satisfaction not only from the sense of order,
cleanliness, freshness, peace and plenty restored,
but from the knowledge that you yourself
and those you care about are going to enjoy these benefits.

~ Cheryl Mendelson in Home Comforts

Baking bread, weaving cloth, putting up preserves,
teaching and singing to children,
must have been far more nourishing
than being the family chauffeur or shopping at super-markets,
or doing housework with mechanical aids.
The art and craft of housework has diminished;
much of the time-consuming drudgery–
despite modern advertising to the contrary-remains.
In housework, as in the rest of life,
the curtain of mechanization has come down
between the mind and the hand.

~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh  in Gift from the Sea

Ideas inspired from these authors,
which have been percolating for some time,
are coming to fruition.

My tall son emptied the cupboard above the fridge –
a tottering pile of tarnished silver.
As I polished each piece I thought of ways
to incorporate these beautiful wedding gifts
into our life more regularly beginning now.

My favorite piece is this bread plate.
This month I’m baking the communion bread for our church.
This Lord’s Day I will put the loaves on silver plates.

I found cloth napkins in four (!) different cupboards and drawers.
Using the container principle, I found a large basket to hold them.
I touched them all up and folded them uniformly.

Lost treasures (birthday placemat) were uncovered.

A table runner from Ecuador, never used. Aren’t the colors magnificent?

With boys grown and gone, I have room in our guest room closet to hang the tablecloths …

…leaving room in this cupboard for my basket of napkins and runners.

Drudgery?  Are you kidding?  Glory!!
It’s amazing
how invigorating,
how liberating,
 how energizing
 clean can be.

Thank you, Lord!

Kitchen Project, The Walls

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This is one fine magazine.  It has wonderful essays,
recipes, reviews and pictures.  See that watermelon on the front?

Dan and Val (my youngest brother and his wife) cleaned their kitchen and
gave me eleven years of  bound yearbooks like this:


I’ve framed some full page illustrations and hung them on my wall.
The idea is to change the pictures with the seasons, but I have
only changed them with the year.

I have dead wall space above my cupboards and
a monochromatic color scheme.
What I needed was some color to vivify the place.

It’s time for the front page illustrations from Cooks.

They will go on the walls after they’ve had a fresh coat of paint.

It was fun to put the groups together.  There are many round shapes above.

I like the lines in the veggies below.

And the leftovers.  I’m excited to add a splash of beauty on my walls.
And, I have to admit, the frugal side of me is pulsing with joy.

Somebody Loves Me

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Two somebodies went together and replenished my favorite tea.
Thank you JAB and KGB!!
Did you see how many bags?  240! 
You know what that means, don’t you?
I’m prepared to offer you a proper spot of tea. 
My teapot and cozy are on standby status.
Party, anyone?

~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~  

The kitchen project is humming, about 1/3 done. 
If I had known I would get such a lift from clean cupboards,
I would have started finished them earlier.

~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~

Adeste Fideles (O Come All Ye Faithful) is a favorite carol.  It was the first carol we learned in Latin.  A few years later I discovered Athanasius, who fought valiantly for the deity of Christ.  Every time we sing “Ver—–ry God, Begotten, not created” I get choked up and say a prayer of thanks for Athanasius, God’s gift to the early church. 
 

In addition to Athanasius, I will think of translations when we sing that verse.  This, from Mysteries of the Middle Ages by Thomas Cahill:

This early exaltation of Mother and Child already demonstrates
the innovative Christian sense of grace, no longer something
reserved for the fortunate few–the emperors and their
retinues–but broadcast everywhere, bestowed on everyone,
“heaped up, pressed down, and overflowing,” even on
one as lowly and negligible as a nursing mother.
In the words of a famous Latin hymn,

“God…is born from the guts of a girl.”

The hymn is “Adeste Fideles,” composed in the eighteenth
centry (in a very medieval spirit) by John F. Wade.
The full text of the cited quotation is
“Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine
Gestant puellae viscera”
The second line was unfortunately translated
in the nineteenth century by Frederick Oakley as
“Lo! he abhors not the Virgin’s womb.”
p. 103

Kitchen Project

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This is the next cupboard I tackled – the Before Picture.  
I’ve worked on this one in the past with my dear SIL “Organization is the Key to Life” Val.
This cupboard is a challenge.  
If I don’t keep it up, malignant growths multiply.

I’m pretending I’m moving – thus everything is removed.
I found the Clorox Kitchen Wipes helpful, easy, and convenient.

Last go around, I elevated the bulk spices on wire racks. It was good.
But, the little spice bottles were gaily devouring order.
We needed a new plan.
  
 
Here they are contained.  I can easily lift the whole caboodle down,
use the spice and put it back into its own happy little home.

This little P-Touch guy is just about my favorite tool in the house.
Add labels to a job and it suddenly becomes gangs of fun.

Ta Da!!
See the wire baskets with sesame oil and hickory smoke on the lower left?
Ha! I feel like the Dutch stealing land from the sea!
With those baskets of bottles,
I stole two inches of space from the air. (They extend over the edge.)
Easily amused is what I am.


Two sections completed make me smile. 
I still l-o-v-e my knives and fork drawer. It still looks just like this:

Kitchen Project

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My deep cleaning project for the next few months is my kitchen.  I’m taking absolutely everything out of each drawer and cupboard and cleaning with bleach before I put it back in beautiful array. I wrote in this post that “I’m convinced if I don’t love a clean house I won’t be consistent in keeping it clean.”  I attacked the silver ware drawer first.  And after I’d taken out the knives, forks and spoons I was aghast at how ghastly it really was. YIKES!

I made a conscious decision to go with wood as much as possible and get rid of the plastic crap.  Sorry folks, but that’s how I feel. 

My husband about croaked when I bought stainless steel measuring spoons that cost five times what the plastic ones cost.  Ya know, if we can’t splurge once in a while when we are almost 50, then when will we, I ask you? 

My 16 year old son bets that I won’t keep it clean, with a wee bit of cynicism in that tone.  Thank you, my laddie.  You have just given me the right kind of inspiration. I’m still at the stage of perfect stacks of forks and spoons.  Hah!  This too shall pass.  Don’t despise the day of small beginnings.  It’s a good start that I love to keep this drawer clean!

~  La bella vita  ~