Daily Declutter

Clutter happened again. The bar (my prime flat spot) is covered with ...stuff again. Parsley in a vase, so it will keep fresh for dinner tomorrow night. A couple of nasty beers that will be made into quick bread (if I put them away, will I forget about them?). A bowl of limes. A couple of vases of flowers that are NOT being displayed to best advantage. A kit for making cough syrup out of herbs (my family have developed a cough, and now it the time to use the kit).

It's so ease for stuff to appear, and it takes work to remove it all. So these things will all be dealt with today. The flowers will be moved someplace smaller, where they will show better. I will write the beers into next weeks menu, then put them away (if my friend does not want them for making corned beef. Is corned beef the meat you cook in beer? I can't remember.). Cough syrup will be made, and hopefully I'll even get around to processing the limes.

All these things are temporary clutter -- they all (mostly) have a definite lifespan. The flowers can only live so long, then they have to go away. I need to get better at dealing with things as they show up, so they don't become clutter.

I do have one permanent thing I need to deal with: potted plants. I have several houseplants sitting around, and some are actively dying. I feel like I should keep houseplants, to purify the air, but I'm not very good at it. They get dusty, and want water more often than I think about it. Is it ok to get rid of houseplants? It's definitely minimalist to get rid of houseplants that I don't love, but are houseplants one of those things that I really should do, like going to the dentist and eating vegetables? I'm thinking of moving one plant out, see how I feel, then evaluate the other plants from there. I will maintain plants in the bedroom because we spend so much time in there, at least for now.

Some things have already been dealt with. I dropped a pair of jeans at the thrift shop, because they were not wanted at the consignment shop. Done. I removed to storage a bunch of jars I am saving for Christmas giving (fudge and epsom bath salts). I found another box of matches in the bathroom, and those are now put away. I'm pretty sure matches are breeding out of dust bunnies in the bathroom. I don't know how they keep showing up. I dropped two boxes at the post office, heading to ebay buyers. Today has not been a loss, but there's always more to do, even as I try to reduce the amount of stuff I have around to deal with.