Now and then, when “stuff” starts taking over our home, I have to ask myself:  “Does everything here have a home of its own?”  When the answer is no, I make new homes for the stuff that stays.  The rest of it has to go.  This is not to say I should impress you, because I don’t do this often enough.

A couple of months after I took to gluten-free and vegan baking, I noticed that all the different flours, starches, and natural sweeteners I had bought were homeless, which was obvious after they started overtaking another piece of my home.  They would be thrown into a paper grocery bag after each baking session.  There they’d hide, making clutter in the next room right into my meditation space.   Baking became the activity that I romanticized but when it came to it, I’d be swearing up a storm in the act, trying to scoop into and out of flour and starch bags that were original packages to each product.

Enough was enough.  I invested in Snapware.  Not the best but not the worst.  I bought the box of 38 pieces and went to town, building homes for all my pretty flours and starches.   I gave my light brown sugar a castle that holds twenty-four cups.  Yes, I buy the big bag and use it well.  I bought aluminum scoops which work magnificently; spoons just don’t cut it anymore.  I found new homes for things I couldn’t put into containers, like my Agave sweetener and Spectrum shortening.  To baptize their new homes in my kitchen after I was done building them, I baked.  A scoop into the flour, and sweetly into the measuring cup.  A teaspoon gliding in and out of the xanthan gum and voila, into the mixing bowl.  If I knew baking could be so easy, I would’ve built new homes a long time ago.

Lesson 6:  Everything has a place once I make it. 

Lesson 7:  Once I make the place, rejoice when I get invited in.

Snapware = Bringer of Peace and Harmony

Related Articles