The Halloween Bowl

The Halloween Bowl served a great purpose for about 12 months in the Vincent household. It was a large, bright orange bowl with a black Jack-o-Lantern face on the outside. It would wash off little bits at a time with each washing, leaving black streak marks on my hands or the towel used for drying.

But we couldn’t get rid of this bowl. It was the token bowl, used for basically everything in our house; for making pancakes or cookies, serving pasta, or tossing a salad. It was our finest china that made its appearance on the dinner table, on a daily basis.

It didn’t go with the décor. It wasn’t always the best type of bowl for the current project. It certainly wasn’t the “holiday” bowl, since it was used year-round. And the little black marks got to be very annoying, to say the least. But looking back on this bowl, it holds great significance in my mind.

This bowl is a symbol of simplicity. It’s a reminder of simpler days. We bought this bowl in the 10 peso section at Walmart around Halloween. Since we left the majority of our belongings behind, we didn’t have much to fill our 3 bedroom house in Mexico, especially for the kitchen.

Since I love to bake, & am really learning to cook, this required some creativity on my part. Sometimes it meant washing the Halloween bowl 2 or 3 times during the cooking process, just to be able to complete one meal. Or squishing my pride, one little meal at a time, when the non-matching orange bowl made its appearance at dinnertime.

And now I’m home to a fully-stocked kitchen, with dishes that sometimes don’t even get touched for months. Some of them, I have decided, I never want to have to live without again. One of these being my KitchenAid. Amen for those who make the KitchenAid. Seriously, geniuses.

But it’s also made me realize just how much we really have. And I miss the simplicity. This isn’t a super-spiritual lesson, because I’ve always realized just how much we have. But I am beginning to realize the true, biblical meaning of simplicity. Stuff does get in the way. The more stuff I have, the more time it takes to keep it organized & clean. The more money it takes to keep up with the newer, better stuff. The more mental energy it takes as I think about where to find this or that.

And when our time goes into so many other places, it takes away from our time with God. It’s so simple & yet so true. So I’m on a mission to de-clutter & simplify my life. Some might say this is the nesting period (which might very well be true), but I’m on a mission to reorganize & get rid of stuff. But most of all, creating a life of simplicity in the middle of chaos.

Now where did I put that Halloween bowl?