Life in Layers

I’ve begun to notice that I am living off the upper layers in too many areas of my home.
I have a couple of favorite cups for tea, one for coffee. I use them, wash them, and return them to a cabinet full of mugs that rarely connect with hot water. Pots and pans seem to be narrowed down to the same two or three, and seasonings fill my cabinet yet only the front row sees any action, except on holidays, of course. I pull from the upper levels of all my drawers, and live at the end of the closet closest to the door. If I dive deeper, I am lost and find nothing I can use at the moment, so my favorites and best fitting tend find their way to the top.
I strive to simplify but this seems more like settling in. I’m not sure if my quirks are part of the march down the south side of my life’s midpoint, or just that my subconscious is tired of dealing with too much stuff.
After all, I observed my grandmother, and then my mother, create their comfort zones, moving the walls ever closer to live within their reduced world. And in stark contrast, I now watch my daughter dive to the bottom of her dresser in search of the perfect shirt, clothing flying the process.
I liken my foundations drawer – yes, it has all that stuff to firm and flatten – to an archeological dig. For anyone near my age reading this, I don’t have to explain. For anyone else, just think of it as all the ways we fight the jiggle when dressing in anything besides pajamas – and the stuff goes way back. Seriously, I gave a strappy tube top I used to wear in my twenties to my daughter who thought it was cool.
As you can see, I am fighting it. I just don’t know if I am fighting for a life of minimalism or against sliding into a new level of old. But regardless the reason, the struggle exists. And as I will have more “me” time this holiday, I will be able to jump on it and execute my personal scorched earth routine on some of these offending hot spots. I take a drawer, dump everything into a box, and try on each piece before declaring it yay or nay. Performing this ritual while a classic Christmas movie runs in the background keeps me engaged and helps to ease the dread of bagging things that haven’t seen the light of day in decades. But even without that distraction, envious visions of roomy drawers and cabinets keep me on point.
I should be able to breathe deeply and lay off at least some of my layered living by the New Year.