Clutter

If I get any more clutter going on here, I think I might go stark raving batshit.

How's that for an introduction? I've got a large box with someone else's stuff in it that is waiting for her to pick it up. I have a kitchen that is beyond thrashed. I'm surrounded by papers upon papers -- dealing with the end of one employment contract and looking for the employment that will replace that contract. I have notes on law school, nursing school, community colleges, financial aid, cell phones, investments, volcanic hazards, contractors, and L&I claims. I've started taking notes on grant writing for another local organization. There's a pizza box on the living room floor, and a phone book. Laundry -- don't even get me started. I have to eventually get the winter stuff washed and packed away, then get the summer stuff situated, but that's going to require that I find an actual dresser at some second hand store. I can't get at most of my books because there's an entertainment center in front of the shelves that we can't use -- a gift from my fiance's Dad. I've got what seems like eight tons of cardboard in my kitchen and a computer desk that serves as extra shelf space.

Papers, remotes, phones, aspirin, envelopes and folders, books, pens, pencils, paperclips...

If I could just get it cleaned out -- once and for all -- what a breath of fresh air that would be. I can hardly imagine. We almost had it -- it was down to the bedroom. Everything was either put away or in a box that was going to the Goodwill. Then finals hit for my fiance and everything went straight to hell.

I'm supposed to be on vacation, and here I am climbing the walls because I'm trapped by clutter. I can't remember the last time I could actually vacuum the entire floor in this place -- there has always been a chunk of it taken up by some clutter or other, and it's usually stuff that is 1) someone else's or 2) I can't find a home for it. You run into that situation pretty quickly when you only have about 600 square feet to work with. It just doesn't seem right.

The thing with clutter, is that it clutters my mind. I can't breathe; I feel trapped by it. I know the saying, if a cluttered desk signifies a cluttered mind, what does an empty desk signify? But you know, clutter is a beast. It takes over corners and pushes in at you like the walls of a tomb in an Indiana Jones movie. It lives and breathes and takes over everything you do. You're constantly working around it, stepping over it, moving it to another corner to get to something else that you need. It chokes the path to the bathroom. It reaches out for your ankles and trips you on the way to the kitchen. Clutter is the tangible poltergeist that is forever underfoot and over head, and marring my line of sight.

There's a difference between clutter and empty. An entire range of "lived in" that is perfectly comfortable without being confining. A working desk is rarely empty. And my desk is pretty much wherever I am thanks to the liberty offered by lap top computers. I admit the tendency to spread my work out over a large area so that I can "see the bigger picture" in what I'm doing -- make connections that I wouldn't otherwise if I was seeing everything in its own neat and tidy collection. But with the clutter, I can't even do that. It traps my thinking so that I can't accomplish anything. Or if I do, it gets half accomplished before it gets eaten by the monster in my living room.

I don't want that home that everyone is afraid to sit down in. I don't like everything so neat that a person feels guilty sprawling out on the couch with a book and a cup of tea, maybe a bowl of popcorn or something. But there has to be a limit....

The fiance is allergy ridden and in bed (snoring again -- see previous blog entry), so there's no help from that quarter, either. It shouldn't be so damn hard to keep 600 square feet in decent order, but lo and behold, it stymies me every freakin' time. I know that I'm not exactly June Cleaver, but come on.

If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.
- Katherine Hepburn