Less Is More

It all started with plates.... YES plates!

My hubby went back to work after 2 years of unemployment and suddenly along with my part time job I was back to having sole responsibility of keeping up our house. Now, I am a housekeeper, that's what I do for a living, and what is it they say about the cobblers children? That's right! They have no shoes.

After a few weeks of falling seriously behind I hatched a plan. I worked hard on it all day long. When hubby got home from his long day on the farm his first question was "Where are all the plates?"

To which I responded "Well, you really only need one."

That's right! I spent the whole day packing up plates, forks, glasses, anything and everything that we didn't NEED more than one of each. We have no children or regular house guest so really people, we only need one plate each, one bowl each, one fork each and so on and so forth!

Now what was I trying to achieve you might ask? A cleaner house? Less things? Not really, Its not like I want to get rid of all my plates! I love my plates! They are vintage and in all different wild patterns. As a matter of fact it was hard deciding which wonderfully wild plate to keep out for myself. Really I just wanted to foster knew habits. Like washing the wild plate after eating from it. Rather then stacking it on the counter and then another on top and so on until I have no more wonderfully wild plates in the cabinet in which case I am forced to wash them all!

Did it help you might ask? Not exactly. As of yet the only thing I have really accomplished is washing plates right before they are actually used. Which, to be honest is still a step in the right direction. I mean its been several months now and I haven't gone digging through boxes for plates. So at least my kitchen is staying some what cleaner. And hey! we are all a work in progress right?

What is my point with all these wonderfully wild plates? Well these plates got me to thinking. How much would I treasure my wonderfully wild plate if I only had ONE? What if I couldn't just run out to some random mega mart and buy a whole box of plates for 5 bucks(of course they wouldn't be my wonderfully wild vintage plates but that's beside the point:)? How much more would that plate mean to me? How much more appreciative of that plate would I be?

Then I was on a mission. At my next craft show I came across a wonderful artist, he was a young guy making pottery with beautiful modern colors on comfortable designs. So what did I do? I bought myself a ....MUG;) hehe you though I was going to say plate but hey, i have so many wonderful vintage plates to choose from but an incredible handmade piece of art to drink my tea from, now that's what i needed! That's what i needed to help me start caring about my stuff. Things that mean something, things that have heart and love behind them. Maybe even memories(hints the vintage plates).

Where am i going with all this? I think there has been a disconnect, a disconnect between us and the world we are living in. Take that $5.00 box of plates, where does it come from? How was it made? How did it get to me? All I know is it is sitting here before me, the same as all the food on the plate. How did it grow? Where was it grown? How was it harvested? How did it get to me? As Humans if we can't see it we don't tend to care.

When I grow my own broccoli I practically count out how many florets I need for that meal. When it comes in a bag I just dump the whole thing in the pot. This year has been my first year of actually growing enough food to have a whole meal that was completely grown or harvested by my husband or I. Its a very different feeling eating food that you raised with your own two hands, the same as drinking tea from a cup that someone poured their love into and eating said meal from a plate that holds a special memory. There is no disconnect there. Just pure and simple.

To sum this disconnected meandering of words up I would just like to say: It seems we scramble through life always trying to obtain more to fill a void that could simply be a yearning for one wonderful, memory inducing, love filled wild patterned plate! Sometimes Less is more!

Side-note: I have been wanting to blog about my wonderfully wild vintage plates for sometime now. With Thanksgiving coming on strong I have had a lack of thankfulness. Things ,it seems, in these hard times are well, hard. Just at midnight as Thanksgiving rolled in I posted the below comment on my Facebook feed. It was words that had been scrambling to get out for weeks. They just needed to be said. Immediately I thought about my plates and began to write this blog post. It is not meant to tell anyone how to live their lives. It is just an observation, of my life, and a release of words that needed to be put out there, for me.

Below is that Facebook Update:

Today I am thankful for: My body that can do most things I enjoy, my eyes that see the beauty of the earth, my nose that smells the wonderful scent of anything that is worth smelling, my ears that can hear music and laughter and love that I feel deep inside. Sometimes when life gets hard it may seem like we don't have a lot to be thankful for but sometimes.... less is MORE