More fun with downsizing

For most of our married life I displayed a lot of things on top of our kitchen cabinets: pretty dishes, vases, canisters, a favorite cookie jar from when I was a kid. Filling all that space seemed sort of required. There is space, I must be meant to fill it, I thought.

Lately, though, I’ve been getting fed up with how dirty things get up there. Every time I wanted to use a vase or something it was so grimy it needed serious scrubbing before I could use it.

I thought if I had a larger china cabinet then I could keep them behind glass and they wouldn’t get dirty, at least not as dirty. We do have a smallish china cabinet tucked into the corner of our living room. We'll have to get rid of a lot of books to make room for a larger one. I don’t think that is going to happen any time soon and I wanted a quicker less painful solution.

As I looked at all the stuff up there, though, I wondered how much of it I really even wanted to keep. I believe Marie Kondo has the right idea when she instructs people to first declutter before buying special organizing boxes. I figured the same would apply to buying large expensive china cabinets!

So I got everything down and started sorting. I was surprised to realize how little of it I really did want.

After experimenting with different ideas and arrangements, it is now down to this:

I'm surprised how well I like this more minimal look.

Some of the dishes and vases I found space for inside the kitchen cabinets where they will stay clean until I want to use them. Some of it I plan to donate to our church youth group's upcoming rummage sale. I was delighted when my friend Susan wanted a couple of the things I was planning to donate. It’s nice to know they went to a good home. A few items I am not sure I will part with yet so I put them in a storage bin to think about. Though I am tempted to just take the plunge and donate them after all.