And so it begins

It’s lovely and sunny today with a summer-blue sky. Around noon we had a waste bin delivered outside our house. This is the beginning. For years we’ve talked about renovating the kitchen but we never seemed to have the energy to get things underway. Well, now is the time. Neither we nor the house are getting any younger. For the last few years we’ve been travelling rather than renovating. Whatever we end up doing for a holiday this year, it won’t be very expensive so we might as well spend some money on a reno. The process will be a bit of an adventure in itself and we can look forward to enjoying our new kitchen.

We redid our kitchen in the 80’s or was it the 90’s? It’s looking a little shabby and we’ve been mulling over the idea of switching the positions of the kitchen and the dining room. What finally convinced me to go with that option was that the internet connection in the dining room cuts out every once in a while. We often watch something on a laptop during meals, much in the way my family did when we first got a TV and we sat around, each with our own TV tray, to watch one of the two available television channels. The wifi connection in the kitchen is much stronger than in the dining room. Talk about a first-world problem!

As I mentioned one reason for the undertaking this now is simply the passage of time. For some reason other ‘big’ birthdays haven’t caused me to do more than pause and then keep on pretty much in the way I always have. This year, as my birthday approaches, I occasionally compare the number of years I have lived with the number of years I can reasonably expect to have left. It’s a sobering thought but also a liberating one. Is there a reason to keep this or that? Do I even like it? We have 12 dinner plates. Is it likely that we are ever going to host a dinner for 12?

Getting ready for this renovation has caused me to look at a lot of things I’ve been keeping and decide that it’s time for someone else to enjoy them or it’s time for me to simply dump them. I’ve packaged up 6 dinner plates and 6 of the large bowls that are part of the set. I’ve kept all the bread and butter plates. We use those a lot and are sometimes down to 2 clean ones at the end of the day. That’s not quite as extravagant as it sounds: we have 8 of those rather than 12. Presumably the others got broken along the way.

I take a bit of good-natured flack from friends who think I have way too many books. My background of bookcases on Zoom calls rivals any I have seen from politicians or experts being interviewed. When I began woodworking 17 years ago I subscribed to a number of magazines and read them cover to cover because they were alive with possibilities. I have since cancelled my subscriptions to all of them. They contained more and more stuff that didn’t interest me. I have access to some of them on digital media and now most of what I want I can find through a Google search.

I was prepared to toss the woodworking mags in the recycling but before doing so, I asked at a woodworkers’ Zoom meeting if anyone wanted them. Today the magazines completed the first leg of their journey. The next owner of them lives in Edmonton and will make arrangements to pick the 18 slip cases from a family member here in Calgary. I took another look through them, picked out a few, and I’m left with one slip case. I hope the new owner, a beginning woodworker, will enjoy the possibilities they contain as much as I did.

Even though neither my study nor the shop is up for renovation, more and more frequently I’m asking myself, “What are you keeping this for?” Sometimes it’s because it has fond memories attached to it. Sometimes I really enjoy using the item, and sometimes, whatever it is just makes me smile. I don’t think I’ll ever be a minimalist, but as I get older I’m becoming more discerning about the things that share my space and require time and energy to keep. I expect that when we can move into our new kitchen some of the items that are now in boxes in the basement will make their way out of our house. Stay tuned. I’m sure there will be a number of renovation / ‘downsizing’ stories to follow.

Oh, one more thing, as I finish this up I see there is a snowfall warning for towns to the north of us. Perhaps the first thing to go into the empty bin in front of the house will be a dump of snow.