The Herald-Zeitung

I have this fantasy. It’s about simplifying.

Simplifying seems so completely unattainable at our house that it’s definitely on the level of the power of levitation or Middle East peace.

Yet it’s one of those things that seems like it should be easy. It’s just a matter of letting go and streamlining, right?

For example, I think of how simple it would be if we just had four coffee cups. After all, I don’t even drink coffee. Technically we just need one, but three extra allows for company.

We have about 20 coffee cups. Four with kid’s pictures, three from various cities, two from states, four that match a set of dishes (of which we only have one dish left), and the rest are in the ever-useful category of miscellaneous.

I think it would be much simpler if we had just a single shelf of books. After all, once you’ve read something, it’s time to move on. We have a library card, we can simply read the ones we check out and return them every week.

Instead we have bookshelves, boxes and some dangerous closets with slanting piles of books. Everything from a chewed on “Good Night Moon” to a slightly stained “Dr. DeSoto” to a partially read “Puppy Palace” are spilling over, invading this week’s library books and school work.

We did simplify once, sort of. One summer we traveled in an Airstream with all we needed in a 200-square-foot space. One pot. Two pot holders. Four towels. Four books. A dozen socks.

With 200 square feet you can’t get sentimental about the hand-painted teapot or picture books that involve sneezing fleas.

You have to let go – or at least put the vast bulk of things in boxes that you may not ever come across again.

Which is precisely why I can’t do it.

I’ve always been a sentimental type and motherhood has taken that tiny chink in my nature and created the Mount Everest of sentimental. I could probably more easily do without a lung than I could give up that faded coffee cup from birthday number three or one of the six painted flower pots from art class.

So getting simplified around here will remain a pipe dream. And, I suspect, an overrated one at that.