Notes on intentional living and a quieter way home.

It Was Never About the Mess

There is a shelf in my pantry that I would rather you did not look at, and I am fairly certain there is one in your house too. Three bags of flour open at once and none of them more thanhalf full, a tub of oats that somebody folded shut instead of clipping, half a packet of dried beans a good deal older than I would like to admit, and the small containers I decanted things into and never labelled, so that I now own two jars of a pale powder that could be cornflour and could just as easily be icing sugar. Nothing on that shelf is rubbish, and every item on it was bought on purpose by somebody who meant well, which is precisely what makes it so difficult to deal with.