I’m preparing for a cooking marathon.  Doing something with produce in the fridge that will go bad if I don’t use it today. Baking something grain-free.  Now I’m looking in the pantry for the almond flour.  Ugh!  The shelf where I keep that stuff is so jammed that I can’t get to where I know the flour is.

I sigh and start to take everything off the shelf.  There’s so much I can’t believe it was all on one shelf.  Granted, a lot of it was stacked on top of other things, which is why I can’t see or get to the stuff I need.

I find something like 4 bottles of apple cider vinegar, probably 6 bottles of balsamic vinegar, 3 bottles of olive oil, and a partridge in a pear tree.  Ok, not really, but it feels like that.

Then I find different types of flour – buckwheat, garbanzo bean, cassava.  Some has expiration dates of 2015!  Obviously that’s going out.  I smell it, and confirm that yes it’s way past its prime.  Out it goes.  I find plastic containers I can recycle too.  Between the extra plastic, the expired food, and a better way to keep the soft packages of flour together, the shelf looks much more organized than it did when I started.  And I can reach the flour and bottles of water without calling out a search party.

Now I start to take stuff out of the refrigerator.  And it looks the same in there.  There’s so much bad produce that it fills an entire mop bucket.  All that goes to the compost pile.  At least it will make some great dirt.

I had to clear the way before I could cook anything.  I had to be able to find and reach the ingredients I needed so I could make the food.  It worked so much better when I did.

That’s kind of how it feels when you clean the desk.  Even if you’re going to clutter it up with a new project you’re working on, it helps to have it clear before you start.  So you don’t have to keep shuffling papers around to get them out of the way.  Yeah.  That’s how it felt to clean out the pantry and fridge.

And that got me thinking; maybe it’s time to clean out other things in my life.  Like things I spend my time on that aren’t fruitful, suck life from me.  Stagnant relationships.  Meaningless work.

So I’m paying attention.  Praying about it.  Seeing how I feel as I go about my days.  Taking stock.

Maybe it’s time for you to do that too.  You don’t have to wait until January 1^st.  You can do it right now.  Just look around.  You might see shelves that have become cluttered with things you thought you wanted and never used.  Things that have passed their useful life.  Or things that are rotten.  You don’t know unless you look.

Who knows how long that pantry had looked like that?  And there were apples in the produce drawer from last fall.  They looked like those shriveled heads.  Not edible.  Just taking up space in my fridge.

(c) Kathleen Thompson. The apples are at the bottom.

So take a look around.  See what might be tired.  Expired.  Not you anymore.  Or rotten.  Get rid of what’s cluttering your space, your time, your life.  You’ll be able to see so much more clearly.  And you’ll be able to get at what you need to make something wonderful.

What would you like to get rid of?  Leave a comment.