Decisions Decisions on a perfectly perfect Cape Town day!

It was one of those absolutely perfectly perfect Cape Town Summer days.  Not a breath of wind, cloudless skies, warm shiny sun, the possibilities of what to do were endless.  And when you live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world visited by thousands of tourists annually, the possibilities of what to do literally are endless.

A train trip to Simons Town, hike up Table Mountain, picnic at Kirstenbosch, stroll along the Sea Point Promenade, cocktails at the Waterfront, pizza at Blue Peter, squirrel feeding at the Gardens – decisions, decisions?  Not to mention the wine farms……. Oh my word, picnics, wine tasting, and, and, and… so in the end, I decided to clean my kitchen cupboards.

Now for a small house, we have a surprisingly big kitchen with a crap load of cupboards – so I had my work cut out for me.  I started with the double cupboards under the sink… a set of cupboards that judging by what I hauled out of there, hasn’t been cleaned since we moved into the house 8 yrs ago.  You name it, it was under there.  Old fashioned snackwich maker, check.  Wonder steamer, check. Packet filled with bits of congealed play dough mixed with what I am hoping was water, check.  About a million pegs, check.

I must be honest I was ruthless in my tidying.  Anything that hadn’t been used in the last 6 months was tossed and to be honest eventually that time period was narrowed down to 3 months.  If I hesitated for even a second when I asked myself if/when/how/why I use something, in the bag it went.  Like I said – RUTHLESS!

I then worked my way around the kitchen until I came to our “paper cupboard” under the microwave.  This houses our phone book, concertina file with documents, school letters, forms, bills, notices and about 101 pieces of Artwork.  Now this was where my biggest dilemma of the day arose.  What the hell does one do with all the Artwork?

Now I am no Suzy Homemaker, but even I have a “memory chest” where all the kids important certificates, mother’s day cards, photos and other odds and ends are stored.  It also contains a generous amount of Artwork that the kids have done during the various stages of their lives.  But what does one do with the rest?

As an example my “paper cupboard” produced a painted picture of a dinosaur, a dot-to-dot dinosaur, a dinosaur made with recyclables, a dinosaur made by blowing paint out a straw, a hand drawn dinosaur, you get the picture (no pun intended).  Each picture is obviously gorgeous and clearly highlights a natural ability that made me realise that not only is my son a budding sports star, actor, singer and genius, but artist ASWELL!!

But in all seriousness, if every piece of artwork that is produced for the next 12 years is kept where will we end up?  I realised if I don’t start sorting out the wheat from the chaff then one day I am going to find myself opening the door to a smiling flower wearing Niecy Nash telling me to take a big girl pill and throw out the damn artwork (and while I am by no means a tidy person, if there is one show that highlights the dangers of not tidying up regularly, it’s Clean House).

So I looked through the copious amounts of Art, selected a few good pieces that might make me some money one day and got rid of the rest.  But, before you judge, I didn’t just scrunch them up and toss them into my overflowing black bag, I treated them with the respect that they deserved.  I folded them up neatly, and placed them carefully deep deep (deep) down in the bag (I didn’t want to have to explain to little people why Artwork was being thrown away).

Granted, this was not the best way to spend a gorgeous summer’s day.  But let me tell you something, de-cluttering is rather therapeutic (and much cheaper than actually therapy) and while it might have been a waste of a perfectly perfect Cape Town day, at least I know that Niecy, won’t be paying me a visit anytime soon.