It’s a nice way to wake up.  And thankfully, they held their song until a little after 7.  Any earlier and I might not have been so receptive.

Just helped my grandmother rearrange furniture.  Rearranging is a dangerous hobby of my grandmother’s.  Every visit, things have moved and systems have been redesigned.  Trash disposal is one of the more frustrating subjects.  Being in the country, trash needs to be separated into things that can be burned, things that can be composted, things that can be recycled and things that go to the dump.  In theory, this is not a problem and in fact I think it is the better, more responsible way to deal with trash.  (Maybe the burnables pile isn’t so eco-friendly)  Where we get into trouble is that the containers, the locations and the timing of disposing trash are changed by my grandmother on a random yet regular basis.  It’s as if she is solving the global issue on trash, always trying new approaches and new tools.  While this may be admirable on some level, when it comes to figuring out what to do with an empty yoghurt container or a wine bottle, I am left to wander through cupboards, bins, and barrels to determine how to dispose of them.  The simple task of putting a bottle into the recycling, something that should take about 30 seconds – tops, becomes a 10 minute quest for the correct bin that might be in the kitchen, on the porch, in the garage, or moved to the barn.

The kitchen in general is another rearranging quagmire.  Dishes are moved depending on the season, the number of guests, and the apparent whims of my grandmother.  For a long time, we knew that blue handled silverware was stored on the porch in a buffet from my great grandmother’s house, and everyday flatware was stored in kitchen drawers. But, when setting the table, one must use the silverware that has been pre-rolled in the cloth napkins that may be on the counter by the dining room table, in a wooden box on the screened in porch, or maybe tucked away in the pantry.  Dishes roost in several locations and are “beaten” out on a need-to-know basis.  The only dishware that doesn’t require a search party  is glassware.  For some reason, coffee mugs have always remained in the cabinet to the right of the sink, and glasses are always to be found in the end cabinet.

Food stuffs don’t escape the reorganization kerfuffle.  The refrigerator is a land unknown, but fortunately a contained land.  While the jams and jellies may migrate from shelf to door to shelf, at least we are dealing with 25 square cubic feet of limited space and options.  Eggs, however, are easy to find but difficult to ascertain.  Fresh eggs are sometimes put at the front of the container, but lately the fresh eggs have been moved to the back of the bus so to speak.  This actually makes some reasonable sense to me as it forces one to use up the older eggs first.

Oils and vinegars also have a migratory pattern.  Vinegars have the most regulated route: on the porch or pass through window in the summer; spring and fall finds the vinegars collected on a tray on the counter; and vinegars winter in the refrigerator.  Oils are much less precise, and I suspect their mystery travels are due less to forethought than to absent-mindedness.

And don’t even get me started on utensils.  Utensils are at the mercy of visiting guests, who are so overwhelmed with the re-arranging protocols that when emptying the dishwasher they shove errant spatulas, wooden spoons, and knives into drawers, crocks, and racks haphazardly and quickly leave the scene of the crime.    Actually, most of the utensils have also maintained their homes on a continual basis, but I guess because everything else moves around we all figure it really isn’t worth memorizing where these things go.  Grammy will move them eventually.

I haven’t even begun to address the rearranging of books, magazines, papers, towels, gardening equipment, clothes and vacuum cleaners.  It really doesn’t bear thinking about.  But suffice it to say, my grandmother has raised puttering to an art form.  She is always busy, beavering away on projects to minimize, organize, and remove clutter.  I wonder if this is foreshadowing for me?

As ever,

K. Quinn