Why Be Organized?

Not my own "Pile", but very similar!

When I write these posts at home, in my computer room, my back is to “The Pile”, so I don’t have to look at it.

“The Pile” takes up about half of my computer room, and appears to have taken on a life of its own.  I’m positive that some of the components of “The Pile” have discovered how to reproduce, and they do so whenever the lights go out. 

I mean, how else could I explain the growing mass of stuff that I conveniently ignore while I’m typing this?  It has to have become a living thing; I’m sure I can  hear it breathing behind me!

Surely I didn’t create this monster and continue to feed it almost daily…not me!

Or…did I?

I am a severe procrastinator.  Look at the gaps I’ve already made in writing on this blog!  So I let “The Pile” start months ago with just a little notebook tossed on the floor that I swore I’d pick up later.  Then it was the keyboard that I quit using when I got a new one.  At this very moment, there are 9 banker’s boxes overflowing with the things that followed the notebook and the keyboard.  There used to be a metal file cabinet in this room, somewhere, I promise!

It’s not just my computer room.  When we moved into this house in 2000, our master bedroom had a large, roomy walk-in closet.  Somewhere along the way, somebody stole that one and replaced it with a much smaller “reach-in” closet! 

Actually, it’s an offspring of “The Pile”, “Pile Jr.”, I guess.  That one is made up of shoes, purses, clothes that fell off their hangers who knows how long ago.  I’m convinced that I have a whole wardrobe on the closet floor that I don’t even know about!

The sad thing is that it isn’t even the family of piles around the house that bothers me so much.  It’s the fact that I’ve gotten used to them; so used to them that I don’t even notice them anymore.  I have to actually MAKE myself see them to even recognize that they still exist.

Why am I suddenly so determined to pare down all this “stuff”? 

1.  I can’t find things that I know I have. 

2.  I forget about something I do have, so I buy another one, only to realize later that I now have 5 whatevers.

3.  It’s not just small stuff, it’s important papers that I can’t lay my hands on when they’re most needed.

4.  I’m showing a real lack of stewardship for the things I own.  They don’t get an appropriate home in my home; they get tossed around like trash; they get crushed under other things that aren’t in their appropriate place.

Along with being a procrastinator, I tend to look at the big picture so much that I get frustrated and discouraged even before I begin a project.  I look at my computer room or my closet, and I see hours and hours of work ahead of me.  It’s so huge and daunting that I just never start.

But this time I am trying something different.  The rest of the house will have to wait while I tackle the computer room.  I’ve broken the whole room into 6 areas.  I believe that each area can be cleaned out and reorganized in small spans of time over one weekend apiece.

My first area will be the side wall against the door.  That’s my project for this coming weekend.  I’ll post my progress then, along with some before and after photos.

It’s time to get this show on the road and get rid of “The Pile” and family for good!  And now I've made my intentions public, so I HAVE to do it, right?

Until next time …