Cleaning up a mess

 

The above is not the mess in my house.  It is a picture of the mess from Ex-GF-M's place AFTER she emptied out a den where she tossed many things after her husband died.  Like me, in grief, she couldn't deal with the effort it takes to keep a place neat and tidy, and let things go to pot.  Even when the big mess is cleaned out, there are smaller messes still left to be taken care of - a process that has to be repeated until a place can be considered neat and tidy.

Lately, RQS has been helping me straighten out my place.  It's been a slow slog for me, as we seem to be taking two steps forward and one step back each weekend.  On my own, I've been trying to take care of things as well.  Today, it was another day where I find myself cleaning up the space around my computer desk.

RQS has described me as a person who can be very organized, but gets overwhelmed by the process of organizing things.  In many ways, I think she's right. Julia Child had a better way of organizing her kitchen than I do for my desk.  On one of her kitchen walls, she had a diagram for each of her kitchen tools.  If she saw the outline, she knew that the tool was either in use, or needing to be cleaned.  I wish I could be that good in organizing things.  

A perfect example of my lack of personal organization is my freezer.  I love to buy certain foodstuffs on sale.  But I never seem to plan far enough in advance to thaw out tasty food - such as strip steaks I buy on sale at Stew Leonard's.  So, by the time I think of having a steak, there is no good way to thaw it out quick enough for me to enjoy it for dinner.  Often, I end up throwing out (formerly) good food, simply because it sat in the freezer too long.  AARGH!

I find it interesting that I can clean up other people's messes, but have a hard time cleaning up my own.  I guess it is how I am wired - if I get too close to things, my ability to make sense of those things is negatively affected.  Instead, I must be disinterested in some way to work effectively.  In the case of my desk, I may be interested too much to do much of anything.  And I may not be interested enough to care much.

Who knows?  I may get this desk straightened out yet.