Organizing the Kitchen

I had resolved to go with the flow and not clean up. But on the first night I had jet lag and was up all night. I surveyed the house with my video camera, feeling helpless confronting The Hoard. After I came into the kitchen I decided to roll up my sleeves and try to do something. I started clearing up the counter. It was like being on a archeological dig, peeling through layers of history. There were school phonebooks from 1980, letters from elementary school, form letters from insurance companies and junk mail. Junk mail filled the void. Under the mail was rotting crumbs of food. They aslo had this recycling approach were used paper plates cold be put out in a special garbage bin, for food scraps and yard waste. My parent's approach to cleaning this was to let the plates (with dried food scraps) pile up and then eventuelly take them outside to this bin. However, they only seemed to do the piling and not get around to taking these out. So the dirty paper plates contributed to the pile on the counter. I cleared and cleaned all night. By morning, I had half a clean counter to show for my efforts. I took to cleaning the kitchen table and floor, both piled with papers, but I needed a break. I was getting tired. I knew this wouldn't last, but I just felt the urge to do something, maybe to measure myself and see how long cleaning takes to put the whole project into perspective.