I'm Trying Not to Project My OCD, but...

One of the most stressful parts of moving – aside from having a team of complete strangers touch every single item in your belonging and load it mysteriously into a cavernous flatbed, while you cross your fingers and toes that the truck driver has just the right amount of coffee in his system to make the drive safely, but not too much so as to make him reckless going over the speed limit, lest your great-great-grandmother’s prized tea set be broken – is deciding how to organize the kitchen.

In our first four years of marriage, we lived in six houses, four we owned, and two we rented while we were in the process of moving. We’ve been put for almost eight years now, but I’d like to think that concentrated block of experience is still with me…that, if anyone knows how to organize a new kitchen, it’s me.

There are pretty monumental decisions to be made in organizing a kitchen, you know, ones that – at least in my experience – involve complex geometry and higher-level calculus to figure the optimal location of the silverware in relation to the sink, the dishwasher, and the prep area.

Sure, if you improperly allocated a cabinet to plastic ware, one that you later realize would be better served to house glassware, I guess you could change it. But that would involve so much work, and possibly, the use of a stepstool.

Yes, I think it’s better to make these decisions right the first time, commit to your chosen kitchen layout, and commence cooking.

After the painstaking assembly of the girls’ kitchen over the course of two nights – involving the use of both a power drill and a vacuum [thank goodness our girls are not light sleepers!] – at last it was time for me to organize their kitchen.

At this point, we have only the pots and pans and dishes and food that came with the kitchen, so the task was not too arduous, and I feel like I made really good decisions about what goes where.

I considered the utility of the items, their relation to the various appliances, and the size of the storage vehicles in reference to the number of items to be stored.

Consider:

I think this makes perfect sense. I’m just trying to convince the girls to go along with The System.

Every time the girls descend upon their kitchen, they almost immediately pull out all the spoils. It’s only a couple of minutes before things are everywhere! When I’m invited to join them, “Mommy, play kitchen, please!” I often start by saying ,”Let’s put some of these things back where they belong!”

The girls humor my efforts most of the time…but left to their own devices, they might put the dishes under the sink and the cookware in a drawer.

Deep breaths.

I’m trying to encourage free play. I’m trying not to project my OCD onto them.

But it’s oh.so.hard. sometimes to sit back and see a spatula amongst the fruit. There’s a drawer for that, you know???