Yesterday I found this pretty crystal bowl set in the depths of the garage which I forgot that I had. It was all wrapped up carefully in newspaper dated 2008 which was the year we moved in. I don’t bring much back in the house (most of it goes in the charity box, recycling or rubbish sack) but this was something that we could possibly use on special occasions. If we don’t end up using it then I’ll rethink things.
After I cleaned it all in the dishwasher today, I tried to work out where I could store it in the kitchen. We have an end cupboard which has our best plates at the top but the rest of the shelves are just random bits and pieces like this..
I thought that if I move the lower shelf up, I could fit the bowls on the middle shelf. At that point, my youngest came downstairs and asked what I was doing. She liked the crystal bowl set and said that it would be nice if everything in the end cupboard was our ‘best stuff’. I liked her idea.
I added the crystal bowl set to the middle shelf and took a photo. It didn’t look right that the bottom shelf stuck out like a sore thumb. I remembered what my daughter said and found our best wine glasses, decanter and brandy/whisky glasses (below) that were still in their boxes taking up space elsewhere in the kitchen.
I removed everything from the the bottom shelf and displayed our nice decanter and glasses instead. I think that the cupboard has a much better purpose now. This is how it looks now that I’ve finished…
Other progress today
As it’s bin day tomorrow, I was able to happily go around the house finding things that I could throw away. I already had a nearly full bin outside from the hours I spent in the garage yesterday, so the rubbish round the house filled up the remaining space nicely. I ended up collecting quite a bit of recycling from around the house as well, so that’s all outside ready for next week.
An electrician came round today to quote for some work we need doing around the house as well as to look at replacing the lights outside. I’m really excited about getting rid of some of the old lighting in the lounge and hallway. It’s a job that we’ve wanted to do for a decade! It’s about time we made some changes… we’re getting there slowly.
Until tomorrow…
Sandra
Sandra Madeira 
It is good to have all your nice stuff in one place, your daughter had a great thought. My only question is why have you never used those bowls, they still have their stickers on them. Have you had occasions when you wished you had something like this? I have things I only use once or twice a year and they are all in one place, but recently I thinned them out because we just do not have the need for that much. I really used that clean out as a view as to how we live our life now as opposed to years before, we have changed and our lifestyle has changed.
We are short of dessert bowls and the ones we use are really old and more like cereal bowls, so I think we will use them. It will hopefully stop us having to buy any. I will give it a few months and see if we use them and if not, I’ll thin them out like you say. Thank you