"When I eventually met Mr. Right I had no idea his first name was Always. - Rita Rudner

This afternoon I put up new vertical blinds over our patio door to replace the set that was well past its prime. They required about 45 lbs. of force to move them left and right. It all went fine, but shouldn't the new vanes hang straight down? I've got a couple of recalcitrants that drop at an angle and leave an increasingly wider gap between them and their neighbor. Nothing seems messed up anywhere so I'm assuming it's static electricity that has drawn them to their neighbor and they'll eventually straighten up and hang right.

Last night we had the strongest storm we've seen in the eight years we've lived here. OK, I didn't actually see it because it came in the middle of the night and I didn't figure it was worth getting up for. But based on the duration and intensity of lightning it was a doozy.
In Phoenix you know it's rained a lot when the car in the driveway is actually clean instead of muddy. Still can't get used to things being dirtier after rain.

We're still working this sorta Tiny House movement thing and how it might work for us. (I say "sorta" because we'd never be down in the 300-400 square foot range. More like 800, which is still a lot less than our current 1,340.) After watching three episodes of Tiny House nation we realize a lot of making it work is getting rid of stuff we don't really need but have somehow accumulated and convinced ourselves we need.

This morning before church we were talking about kitchen stuff. Pam has already started culling a lot of her tools and utensils that are anachronisms now that we're eating paleo, like cheese graters and slicers, spaghetti spoons.... But some of the things occupying space in drawers are specialized tools designed to do one task.

Pampered Chef is the ultimate anti-Tiny House company. They design and sell kitchen tools for doing one task with elegance and efficiency. Pam pulled out this thing that minces garlic cloves with just a couple of passes. I thought it looked like some science fiction toy Caedon would have in his collection but she said it's brutally sharp and very efficient. And it takes up space in the drawer to get used on very rare occasions. Somehow cooks managed to mince garlic for hundreds of years without this gizmo, but Pampered Chef has convinced them it's way cooler and better to do it with this thing. Times 100.

I don't care if people buy a thousand Pampered Chef wonders; it's none of my business. It just illustrates an interesting cultural dynamic when people have more disposable income (whether they think so or not) and a fascination with all things new and improved. We have to acquire the better mouse trap whether or not it's actually better, and regardless of whether or not we actually have mice.

This contributes to the (imagined) need for bigger houses with bigger kitchens with more cabinet space. And it's not just in the kitchen where this happens; we need more sophisticated gizmos in our cars, in our electronics (ever more devices), even our garden sheds.

To each his own. But we're increasingly interested in closing out our lives with less, not more. Simpler, not more complex. The kitchen is an easy place to start but there's a lot more after that.