One Drawer at a Time

One of my first steps to downsizing is cleaning out drawers. Sock drawers, desk drawers, junk drawers, and bureau drawers to name a few. This is not a fun process so I am trying to come up with a "Degree of Clean" scale that I can live with. (I was going to call it "Stages of Clean" but that sounded too much like a terminal illness, like when you get to Stage 4 you pretty much are down to a pair of clean underwear and a toothbrush. No, this is not that serious of a process. The "Degree of Clean" is more like the Taekwondo scale. When you get to a 4th level drawer you should have a kick-butt looking drawer. The black belt of drawers, if you will.)

I'm thinking it will work something like this:
1st Degree - Junk/Trash
2nd Degree - What you can live without/give away
3rd Degree - What you want to keep
4th Degree - What you NEED to keep

The 1st Degree is throwing away junk/trash. This is the easy step. The one that gives you no pause. Obviously you can toss a gum wrapper, scrap of paper, holey pair of underwear, or hairbrush with no bristles and not feel a pang of pain. Unfortunately I have pretty much done this with most of my drawers already so I'm moving on to...

The 2nd Degree. This one is a good one because you feel benevolent. The "I can live without this but can someone else use it" stage. This applies to the bazillion candles, candlesticks, decorative flags, decorative pillows, picture frames, frames and more frames. The only reason this stage gets painful is deciding how to dispose of all these items. If they were trash they would already be gone during 1st Degree so now I have to decide how to get rid of these items. More on THAT process in another blog.

The 3rd Degree starts getting a little trickier. This level addresses things I want to keep but will have no use for in a very small apartment. This category includes some of the kids little pieces of grade school artwork, lots and lots of printed pictures we have taken over the years, homemade afghans and baby blankets. I would love to keep all of it but it is just not practical. These items I will have to give careful consideration on who inherits them or what ceremony I am going to come up with to part with them.

The 4th Degree will include things I need. Come to think of it the list of things included in this degree should be very short. I mean, after all, who NEEDS four sets of measuring cups? That's what I found when I cleaned one of two kitchen utensil drawers today. Really? Four? I guess I figured if a recipe calls for 4 cups of four different ingredients there is no washing involved. Just the kind of thinking that has me in this mess.

So now I start my quest for a houseful of 4th Degree drawers. Anyone need a homemade wok dish?

Daily Downsizing Tally: Cleaned 6 drawers. Threw away 1 full trash bag.