The Obsession will now begin

Ok, I'll admit it....I might have an obsession with organizing like other people do with couponing, French cooking or computers. I can't help it. I have a quest, an internal drive to put things in order. I sat and daydreamed with a notepad about what would be the best place to put each item in my kitchen for optimal ease of use and storage. I made charts. I grouped like items together. I demoted less used items to remote storage. I spent a LOT of time arranging adjustable drawer dividers.

Why?

The gritty truth revealed:

I am a Messy.

I will never be one of those urban chefs with open shelves of ingredients and dishes. No Can Do. If there is too much stuff on the counter I get overwhelmed, demotivated, even...no, not ME...grumpy. I even feel that way after I've cooked dinner. I want to avoid the kitchen, hide from the piles of dishes and ingredients, secretly hoping that someone else will clean it up for me. They don't.

but I am a reformed Messy.

I know the tricks. Put ingredients away in stages (all the fridge stuff, all the pantry stuff) as I'm cooking. Just start the dishes and the peace will come as each dish is put away and order begins to return item by item. Don't fool yourself into thinking that washing them and leaving them in the drainer will work. Then the drainer becomes an area to avoid and the whole thing starts again.

So I make a choice.....be chronically messy or foster the obsession with organization. It's a little tiring because I can never let up without disaster lurking around the corner, but I lived for a long time as a Messy (just ask Nancy about my room on Woodcrest Ave.) and I don't like the feeling. Even now there's not much middle ground for me. Things look really good or really bad, and there's only a couple hours of middle ground for me to reign it back in or suffer the consequences.

Hmmm....I wanted this to be funny but it sounds like a confession!

Oh well! Now to start the fun :) Here's a pic of the spice drawer, located to the left of the cooktop (not yet installed). It took a lot of willpower to leave any of the spices in their original jars and not to run out and get stainless steel measuring spoons. I also have my tiny glass bowls and measuring spoons in this drawer so that Dave can measure spices for me - I am training him as my sous chef :)

Dang! The pic won't post. I'll add it as another post