Tuesday, June 12, 2007

A place for everything

I'm NOT someone whose end tables are always dusted, and I will NOT be secretly judging you if yours aren't either, but I like for my house to have minimal clutter. Order relaxes me.

But piles are my nemesis! Unsorted mail. Half-dirty clothes. Receipts for items I've bought but might take back. Freebie fresh vegetables. Library books and Blockbuster movies that need to be returned. Clothes for Goodwill. Most frequently worn shoes. Newspaper articles I'm saving for someone.

Little pockets of limbo are all over our house. But I don't have a place for everything, so I can't have everything in its place.

So I straighten the stack of mail and paperwork; sometimes I even file all of it in my bulging "miscellaneous" folder. I fold the half-dirty clothes in preparation for another half-use. I move the maybe-returns, books, movies and Goodwill bags to my car.

I put the vegetables in a bowl until I can use them in a meal. I put the shoes in a basket. The newspaper articles go to my junk drawer.

Everything's still in the way, but I feel a little better.

1 comment:

Libba Lemon said...

My worst is that I rip pages out of magazines before I recycle them, so there are floating magazine pages all over our house. It drives Jorge insane.

You know I'm a piler too - I'm looking right now at 3 baskets of laundry to put away, a stack of coupons to file and a small mountain of books on my bedside table that either need to be read or put back on the shelf.

The sad thing is I could be just fine to not move a thing.