My favorite mornings are the ones where my husband makes us coffee. Oddly enough, since we became the owners of our local coffee shop, those mornings are few and far between. Most days, my husband makes me coffee at our shop, but rarely does he make us coffee at our home. I treasure the mornings where we are able to sip hot coffee in the living room before the kids get up.
Long before we entered the coffee business, we were coffee lovers. My husband prefers the Keurig while I enjoy the rich boldness of the Nespresso machine, so we have one of each, along with our home espresso machine. My daughter and I are also tea lovers and have collected many varieties of bagged and loose leaf teas. A few years ago I found the perfect farm-style hutch for sale on a yard sale site and knew that it would be perfect for a home coffee bar. But as with most flat surfaces in our home, it became a drop zone. The cupboards filled up with old Torani bottles, half-used powders, and broken tea pots that we hoped to someday glue back together. The drawers were littered with empty boxes, teas we don’t even like, and expired hot chocolate packages. This place that we used to gather in the mornings to make our coffee has become an eyesore, a place that I avoid.
Last night, I located an empty Amazon box, approached the coffee bar, and went into full attack mode. The ruthless elimination of clutter, remember? I am writing the book! Here is my coffee bar before I started.
I began to remove things from the dark wooden top and place them on the table behind me, just to make enough space to have a starting point. I moved left, cleaning the surfaces as I went. I didn’t make any decisions about what to keep and what to throw away, I just piled everything behind me as I cleaned. Once I had the coffee machines wiped down and I could see more than 80% of the surface area of the hutch, I started adding back items from the table where they were strewn. First I grabbed the cup tree – you cannot drink coffee without coffee cups, right? I picked our favorites first, then ones we like or that came from a special trip, and then I placed all of the other coffee cups in the box to donate. My first inclination was to fill up every open space on the cup tree. I even went through the house counting all of our dirty coffee cups to make sure I saved room for them. But then I realized that if I filled up the cup tree, I would leave no room to find new favorites. So, I left several open spaces.
Once I had the surface area stocked, I opened the drawers and began sorting things into my newfound favorite piles – trash it, keep it, or donate it. I condensed like-kind teas into one box and threw empty boxes away. A variety of green tea that none of us really cared for went into the trash. An old, half-used bag of coffee that wasn’t a favorite also ended up in the trash, next to a lovely tea pot that my daughter broke and hoped to glue back together. I am pretty sure it has been over a year since we placed every piece we could find into that Ziploc bag, promising that we would glue it back together later. The problem is that later has not yet arrived. I have not told my daughter about the fate of that teapot, and I am betting that she won’t even notice that it is gone. It feels a little sneaky, and I had to really go back and forth with it. But if I am really honest with myself, I know that we are never going to glue that thing back together. It was time to throw that dream away.
All told, I removed 62 items from my coffee bar. I am pleased to say that more than 25% of the items discarded from the coffee bar are going to be donated to find new life somewhere else. The rest of the items were placed in the trash (and yes, I buried that teapot far enough down that my kids wouldn’t see it).
That brings my total to 260 items and nudges me just over the 25% mark on my journey. In less than one week, I have managed to remove 260 items from my home. Two hundred and sixty items, and I have not even scratched the surface. Every time I walk in my room, I avoid looking at the top of the dresser – which means that is probably the next space that I ought to tackle.
Last night I learned two things. First, just because there is space for it, doesn’t mean I need to keep it. Second. everything doesn’t have to be full, it is okay to have empty spaces. Maybe it is even better than okay, maybe it is good.
I am looking forward to the the next time my husband makes us coffee.
Uncommonly Common Mom 