Orienteering and Organizing

This last weekend I was visiting with two old high school friends.  They were both interested in trying out an orienteering event and we spent over two hours navigating our way through the woods, chatting away and catching up. It was a bit buggy at first but then it was pretty drizzly the whole time which kept most of the bugs away. The upside of being wet. My friend Reegan had gone with me on the last event of last year - where it was snowing as we followed the course and she loves orienteering. And my friend Katie loved trying it out and of course catching up since I hadn't seen her for a few years. I love that I could share my love of orienteering with old friends. 

Which then made me think of the connection for this week.  I just finished helping my friend organize her food pantry today and I am off tomorrow to help anther friend organize her guest room/craft room. I love that I can share my love of organizing with friends. It was so satisfying today. I mentioned to my friend as we ate lunch that I'm itching to organize her pantry. She has a big kitchen with lots of counters which actually can be an issue. Empty surfaces are a magnet for clutter accumulation. In this case a counter by the pantry has spillover and got covered with boxes of food. She admitted that she rarely took things from the pantry shelves and mostly used the stuff on the counter. Important to note she has has three young kids with the youngest being 9 months so in these cases you figure out a system that works and run with it. 

We had fun chatting away as we emptied out the shelves, pulled out the expired items (prize goes to 2008 item for being the oldest) and figured out a new system. My friend was great at living in the present. She had bought some items with the thought of trying it out but had no recipe or in some cases had bought stuff with a plan but admitted she wasn't going to make it at this point in her life. 

As I write this I realize a pattern I've found with decluttering. They boil down to steps and you often want to skip over the first step and ignore it because it's the hardest:

1. Figure out what works for you now

2. Declutter everything else

3. Organize for function and effiency

4. Tweak to make everything look beautiful and peaceful

So for instance, clothes. I'm getting closer to what works for me, with my body shape I have now.  I'm paying attention and intentionally experimenting to see what colors look best. What cuts (neckline, leg, body) compliment me. And finally what materials work for my lifestyle. The drape, care needs, casual versus work. This could be a whole other post. The point is, I'm still decluttering as I discard what doesn't work.  I'm not yet finished with step 1 and figuring out what my core uniforms are. 

For my friend, she had a few meals she makes on rotation, lunches and a few desserts she made. No experimentation, no complicated dishes. Just a core collection of a handful of things she made right now. She admitted she'd like to eventually get back to cooking other stuff. But recognized that with everything else going on and the demands of the young kids on her time, this is what it was for now. 

So she was really good at just pulling out all the ingredients that she didn't use in her core dishes. She breezed through step one and I could help her declutter and organize. It freed up a bunch or room and with some strategic, and logical reorganizing, we fit all her food into the pantry. Minus a few items. One category was bags of chips (or something like that). And I remembered her mentioning getting rid of a straw basket on my last visit and luckily it was still in the donate pile. If you have to keep something on a surface, like a counter: coral it somehow. In the case a basket worked perfectly and made it look intentional and pretty. The top shelf was a bit crowded, partly because it was the only safe place that was free of kids getting into which pushed the cereals out on the counter. Not quite done in my mind, but for my friend she was just stunned everything else got put away. And she has engineering brain like me so it wasn't a spacial imagination. She just got used to things being out and didn't see how it'd work. You get used to it. Anyways, it feels so good getting to such a better state and removing the visual clutter for her. And she was super appreciative which is always rewarding. Oh, and I made out with a food haul of some of the stuff she was getting rid of - not the 2008 can though. 

And all the classic things happened that always happen. We found stuff:

1. She didn't realize was so old

2. Duplicates and in some cases even more - of things she bought again not realizing she had one already - just buried. 

3. Lost items - turns out there was a blender behind all the food on the counter that she wondered where it had went and if they had gotten rid of it. 

4. Invasive stuff - stuff that had nothing to do with food but had been tucked away in the pantry. We kicked out all non-food stuff. 

5. Fantasy/future self - stuff she bought because she thought this would be great but it didn't align with who she was right now. Like fig butter and roasted red peppers. No plans means it gets stuffed to the back and forgotten. 

Well, I took notes and am adding to my side project on decluttering. It's helpful seeing the process through another persons eyes. Different challenges but even for the same challenge, it's more obvious when it's someone else going through it. Well off to bed as I dream of organized shelves.