12. Use Food Trays

When I went on my private retreat at the beginning of our simplification program, I spent a wonderfully quiet and refreshing weekend in a beautiful old stone house up in the hills. The house comfortably accommodates anywhere from eight to ten guests at a time and is usually booked months in advance. Guests can have their meals in the communal dining room, or can take meals to their rooms. Coffee, teas, fruit drinks, and all manner of non-dietetic, drippy, crumbly, gooey snacks are available all day long. Guests laden with these spillable foodstuffs make regular treks across carpeted hallways, up and down polished stone stairways, through rooms covered with gorgeous Persian and Oriental carpets, and over beautifully maintained hardwood floors. Yet the floors and carpets and rugs are spotless.

Why? There is only one rule in the house: Any food or drink leaving the kitchen has to be on a tray. When I think of all the time I used to spend blotting up spills from the light taupe carpet and brushing crumbs off the hardwood floors, I wonder why I never thought of this myself. We now have one rule in our house regarding food: Any food or drink leaving the kitchen has to be on a tray. It is such a simple, and elegant, solution.