January is a long, cold, grey month where I live, so I choose to tackle my most difficult project in January. That would be the kitchen/dining room area.  

The dining area is easy. Remembering to clean the light fixtures and the picture frames and baseboards are the main tasks there.  I plan to finish with that as it is the most rewarding to be able to finish a task with “final touches” that doesn’t need a lot of decision making.  

The kitchen is where the real work is. A full Hogmanay clean is getting to every corner.  That means deep cleaning the oven, defrosting the fridge, cleaning the dishwasher, descaling the coffee maker, and moving the appliances to clean under and behind.  And, of course, opening every cupboard and drawer to wipe down and find what is necessary and what is not.  

Re organization involves answering lots of questions.  “Do I need this?”  “Do I use this?”  “Why would I want to clutter my space to have this?”  “If I haven’t used it since the last time I cleaned up, why would this year be different?”  

I was brought up by parents who lived through the Great Depression and World War 2.  There was always the thought about “would this be useful in the future?”.  If it might be useful it was kept.  My father who was NOT handy kept jars and jars of screws and nuts and bolts. My mother was very practical and as an avid seamstress, created many wonderful clothes for her children to wear. (As a side note: as the youngest of four daughters I didn’t mind having matching dresses with my sisters, but in retrospect I feel sorry for the oldest who traipsed into church with three mini me’s behind her.) My mother kept scraps from her creations and made beautiful quilts reusing bits and pieces of cloth squirrelled away.  I treasure those still.  But in our era of cheap, plentiful goods there is not as much need to store spare screws or buttons “just in case”.  In my journey, rarely have I given or thrown something away that I later have huge regrets about.  Once in a while I am looking for something and then realize that I had decluttered it in a previous purge. Usually I can’t remember how long ago that was so I either have dementia or I so rarely used it that being without is not a hardship. This also liberates me to procure quality products rather than just more. 

As the kitchen is such a large project I don’t want to feel overwhelmed the first month that I am living Hogmanay.  In the past my thoughts and plans have been much bigger than my (bordering on elderly) body or energy can handle.  So I’ve tried to do too much at one time and then suffered the physical and mental fatigue. I have learned that my maximum is about three hours.  So again I plan to divide my kitchen into manageable zones.  On days of low energy or short on time I will pick an easier zone.  Again each person’s situation varies.  I consider the more difficult tasks to be the appliances and the spice cupboard.  So those will definitely be zones that I chose to do when I have the energy and time for several hours. 

So we start….

After I go shovel more snow!