A clean pantry. A new year.

It's amazing how little things can make you feel so good.

Today is the last day of 2007 (which freaks me out to no end), and I spent much of my day cleaning out our pantry. We have what our builder termed a "bulter's pantry", whatever that is supposed to mean. We certainly don't have a butler, nor does anyone else in our neighborhood. It's a great room though, connecting our dining room to our kitchen and provding a ton of storage space.

The problem with having a lot of storage space, however, is that it's a clutter magnet. Clutter from all across the universe is drawn inexorably towards my pantry, hurtling through space in order to come to rest in a huge mass of useless crap.

Today, the mass of useless crap and I did battle. It was a sight to see, and I am proud to say I stood victorious in the end.

There is something so lovely about walking into my newly cleaned pantry. It feels so open and airy! Granted, I need more shelf space and I could have probably gotten rid of a few more things. But for now, I feel like I have a clean slate - at least in that one space in the house. And with two little kids, I'll take the victories I can get. Goodness knows when I'll have the opportunity to tackle another room, or even a closet.

As the new year approaches, I feel the need to reorganize, clean up, declutter and simplify. I hate having too much stuff, yet somehow I keep amassing more and more. Every year I donate bags of stuff, get rid of toys we don't need, clothes I don't wear. And every year there seems to be more stuff than ever to go through. I'm not a big shopper (would that I could afford to be!), so I'm not sure how it happens. Like I said, I think there is some gravity-like force emitted by empty space and the "stuff" of the universe can't resist it. I'm pretty sure science will someday confirm it. Newton only had part of the physics story. He'd never met my pantry.