I can tell when my husband is feeling energetic because he starts clearing everything in his path.

He clears his desk of extraneous paper. He hangs up clothes. He especially starts washing things in the kitchen. One load of dishes and random utensils. Another load of leftover pans. Another wash of plastic containers and cooling racks left over from holiday baking.

Magically, the neglected counter space is now clear and breathing freely after days and weeks of being gunked up with leftover detritus.

When I say breathing freely, that's what it feels like. It's a breath of fresh air, so to speak. When your glance falls upon it, all you can see is exactly what needs to be there, no extra items to snag your eye. No pile to make the eyes glaze over with confusion.

Even better, any new clutter clearly does not belong. It was finally easy to toss the old birthday candles, the random new cookie tin, and the gifted spicy candles. (Why do candles pile up so? Maybe because they might be useful. Some day. Even if you kinda hate pine/cranberry/pumpkin spice-scented candles.)

Also, he's been baking bread again - every three or four or five days - since we got the fabu dough mixer. Having fresh bread daily is very nice, but the way we set up the space makes it all easy. We rearranged the space to allow the mixer and bread flour to have a permanent place on that one section of counter, so it doesn't get cluttered up so much any more. A wooden cutting board lives there too, with the bread knife and the bread itself. So no more tolerance for random jars or lids or stuff that we aren't sure whether we should wash or throw away. They get swept up every other day.

Now I'm no slouch. I keep dinner and dishes moving along every day. But when someone takes it upon themselves to clear the things you've been putting off, it is a delightful surprise.

This morning I went into the kitchen to find yet another counter top clear. And the sink was all shiny. Clear space! Ah, beautiful clear space. The kitchen cleaner has struck again, bless him. I wonder if I can get him to do floors.
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