Today I am bowled over......

The floors are covered in books, vases, dvd's, bowls and more bowls, little tchatchkies and other assorted useless things.  I am cleaning today.  I decided that I couldn't take any half measures and had to do a very late Spring clean, one room at a time.

When my daughter was a very little girl she used to clean and tidy her room by herself. She would start with enormous enthusiasm by emptying all her shelves, her drawers and her cupboards.  Slowly the floor of her room would fill up with things, then the chairs and every inch of available counter space.  The contents of her room would make its way onto the floor of the hallway, until every inch of space near her room was covered in the now-moved contents of her room.  It was usually at that point that she would sit down and start to cry.  It all just became too much.  She could always imagine taking everything out, but couldn't cope with putting it back. 

I am at exactly that point now.  It's early evening.  I'm tired, dispirited and want to stop, but the room looks like an explosion in a secondhand shop and I feel like throwing my hands up in horror and surrendering.  This is a dangerous place for me to be.  It is at times like this that I do one of two things.  Either I begin to indiscriminately throw things away or I shove things back in the same places they were in originally whilst stuffing the bits that have no real home into odd dishes, jars and corners.  What this means is that there will be things which become forever lost.  Lost things in this house are commonplace.  Sometimes it's like opening Tutankhamun's tomb when I start to genuinely clean up.  Long lost keys surface, tiny bits of thread, odd buttons, little stuffed toys, dozens of screws that look really useful, all these small things emerge from their dusty hiding places. Very rarely are any of the hidden things useful and I have yet to find a use for those old screws. 

I start off with such good intentions, just like my daughter, and then I become swamped by things.  Things that I might want, if not now, then at  some point in the future.  Just like I could cook and serve a small village with the amount of food I have stored in the kitchen, I also have serving bowls and dishes to serve these huge amounts of stored food.  I could easily cater a wedding without having to buy a single platter!

A few years ago when I went to Findhorn in Scotland I was inspired to start making bowls. I'm not sure why bowls took me with such a passion but I know that when I see a nice bowl, I want it.  Maybe I see myself as a Buddhist begging monk with an empty bowl that I trust will be filled, but I buy bowls all the time and when Ralph was doing pottery earlier this year, I asked him to make more bowls.  He did, and they are really beautiful, but now, on display, in this one room, I have no fewer than 21 bowls!  All shapes and sizes, of course. Not to forget the 11 vases of assorted sizes and this now includes the huge red glass one I bought today. I must have been worried that we didn't have enough.

I have said it before and I am 100% certain of it at this moment.  I am not a minimalist.  I am a Cancer, I build nests, I surround myself with objects and then I can feel safe and cocooned.  I guess I will always be this way.  I trust that this is true since it has always been this way.  I'm sure that tomorrow morning all the 'stuff' off the shelves and from the corners will still be here.  I will approach it fresh, with the renewed energy that morning brings. Maybe this time I'll do a little cull and get rid of a few things.  Today I managed to give away a glass globe and a glass egg.  This is progress.  Things can only get better.

I now have a deadline.  Sunday is my birthday and I have invited a few friends for an afternoon tea party. By then, the kitchen should smell of baking, the cakes made, the crusts cut off the sandwiches and the house will be a serene oasis of calm.  How I'll be, I'm still not sure.