I recently made a very small change to the food cabinet next to my stove that immediately made it neater. It’s such a simple thing that I’m a little embarrassed I didn’t pick up the habit earlier, but now that I’ve implemented the change, I’m totally set on this new way of doing things. Here’s what I did.
No more pepper flakes everywhere!
See that black-and-white contraption above? That’s my pepper mill, and it’s now sitting in a shallow bowl. A few days ago, after noticing how littered the bottom shelf of this cabinet had become with pepper flakes, I unloaded everything, wiped it clean, and was just about to put the pepper mill back when it hit me:
I didn’t need to live this way. My pepper mill didn’t need to live this way.
The answer, of course, was absurdly simple. Storing the pepper mill in a small bowl or ramekin would contain the flakes and keep the shelf clean and tidy. I already do this for my honey jar (which we’ve recommended before) to keep honey from dripping all over the shelf, so it follows that I’d have thought to apply the same principle to my pepper grinder.
And yet, it took years of owning a pepper mill to make this connection. High five!
The upside to this is that it’s a good reminder of how we all occasionally suffer from glaring blindspots to solutions right in front of us. This was my example. What about you?