Household Agendas

We Armstrongs have had a fair amount of company this week. Different people, different populations, different days and nights. It has given me pause to think about households and homes and why do we/I do things the way we/I do them around here, anyway?

When someone asks me if I have a pen? "In the junk drawer." Which is in the kitchen, of course. Doesn't everyone have a junk drawer? Ziplock bags and grocery bags? "Under the sink." (As are all the vet meds and housecleaning whatnot; clearly no longer a childproof home.)

A huge part of my household organization comes directly from my mother. She is a textbook example of great home economics. I guess just like ducks, the imprinting started at an early age, and my homes always seemed to be a spin-off of Mom's.

Kitchen Organization 101 I also learned from the mother of a friend back in our newlywed/early parenting years. My friend's mother, a wonderful Southern lady, came to visit her daughter-my-neighbor in East Lansing, Michigan, and proceeded to re-organize the kitchen cupboards to what she saw as a "better plan". Her daughter-my-neighbor was unamused (and was still postpartum hormonal), so the whole thing was a "fail" on her part, but I took it to heart and saw the wisdom of moving the glasses and plates directly to the cupboards over the dishwasher. And thus has been each of my households, since.

My past four household kitchens have always included a fruit bowl. Full of fruit. Why? Because our Polish babysitter way back when there were only two kids admonished me for not keeping fresh fruit out all the time. And you know what? By golly, she was right! This fruit bowl held with it the premise that our kids could eat any fruit from the fruit bowl, anytime, without asking. And to this day, our adult kiddos are pretty healthy eaters who love their fruit. (And a bowl of fruit just looks good, too.)

In this house, we have no hall to speak of. But in all the other homes, the games were in the game closet, which of course was in the hall. Because that's just where games go: in the hall closet. Ditto the junk drawer. Scissors, tape, paperclips and rubber bands: junk drawer. Even as I moved from Oklahoma to East Coast, then West Coast, then back again, I managed to have a moving box labeled Junk Drawer. I even had a junk drawer in Cairo. That junk drawer held lots of string (because that's what things were wrapped and sealed with) and spare change. (Tips/"baksheesh" for all the sundry people helping me in my Egyptian days).

When our family of five moved from Michigan to Oklahoma, we made arrangements to live in married student housing for a month, till we bought a house. I remember my parents laughing that I had moving boxes labeled Basement. Those packed items came from my basement, and yes, they were unpacked in the new house's basement, much to my parents' amusement. Not many houses in Oklahoma had basements; how was it that I presumptuously packed for a house with a basement, and subsequently, we purchased a house with a basement? I don't know. But the household organization unpacked with little to-do because of that.

We are coming up on nine years in this humble abode. A 4-bedroom, 2-bath old, old farmhouse.
Junk drawer: check!
Fruit bowl: check!
Basement (once again, a house with a basement:) check!

What would I embrace? Well this IS an empty nest. I have room in the house for art, music, guests. What I would like is...a conservatory. For my plants...

I guess that is certainly a moretacome post. For sure. A long way away, I suspect.

But this one might do: