Wherein Heidi Gets More Organized and is Not Taciturn
Sep 8th, 2009 by heidi
I am a messy person. While my desk is reasonably organized and my books are obsessively tidy, the rest of my world can get untidy to the extreme. One might not think so from photos like this, taken when we lived in our little flat in Manchester:
The thing that one must realize, however, is that I cleaned for hours to achieve that level of sparkling cleanliness and it didn’t look that pristine again until the day we moved out, almost a year later. I do try. It’s just that paper takes over my life and unless I make a daily, concerted effort to keep tidy, things can spiral out of control.
Now, this does not extend to my bathroom, wherein I bleach the toilet on a regular basis, ignoring all green/environmental urgings to the contrary, but our toilet seems to be a bacteria-magnet and I don’t like seeing brown fuzz growing in it. Period. I like white toilets.
Anyway.
Generally my house is a place of organized chaos, wherein I can find what I’m looking for without too much trouble. I can tell that I’ve been depressed recently, however, by the fact that it had descended into disorganized chaos, where everything was constantly getting lost, I couldn’t see the bedroom floor, and walking into our downstairs apartment made me feel like I was descending into a reasonably minor level of hell (or maybe Purgatory, if that’s your thing). That’s when I know I’m out of control…when my house isn’t just messy but bordering on tornado-level disaster.
I just haven’t had the time or energy recently to deal with it in any kind of effective manner. I find myself coming home, zoning out, and ignoring all the housework that needs to get done because in the back of my mind, if I try to do it, I see visions of homework, and my child being neglected, and dinner not being made/helped with, and all the other demands on my time SCREAMING to get done NOW NOW NOW! Picking up all the crap that’s been sitting on my bedroom floor waiting to get organized since we moved back to Seattle last summer just doesn’t scream as loudly, that’s all, even though it grates on my nerves to see it every morning and evening.
In addition to cleaning, I’ve gotten two-thirds of my fiction book collection catalogued in my LibraryThing account, which is now linked via the handy little widget on my front page. I’m really quite obsessive about my books. They are separated into fiction and non-fiction (it niggles me if a non-fiction book gets mixed up with the fiction books, although I catalogue autobiographies in fiction, incidentally). Non-fiction is classified by rough category, although I need to do this better, and fiction is all in alpha order by author’s last name and then, within authors, by rough date of publication.
So.
Getting these all entered in makes me happy. Getting my house tidier makes me happy. Bringing some order into my life induces contentment.
Why can’t I be this organized every day, then? If it makes me so pleased with life, why can’t I keep it up? This is one of those questions of the universe that plague me constantly (I could go more in-depth into these troublesome questions but that is a post for another day). In the meantime, I need to take pictures of my bookshelves to show all of you JUST how nutty I am…
I am NOT obsessive about my books, though I do like to have them in order by author and series on the few occasions that I actually get them onto their shelves properly. However, I do understand completely your frustration: loving the way it feels when my environment is clean and tidy, but lacking the motivation or proper approach to keeping it that way. Every once in a while I become a whirling dervish of obsessive cleaning and organizing, but once that energy runs out everything slumps back into the ordinary run of things.
It’s one of the things about moving into this combo apartment/house situation this month that makes me nervous. I’m going to have to keep things tidy for the transitions (that’s part of the deal, actually), and I’m concerned about my ability to keep it up.
Oh, and where do I keep my clothes and shoes? Do I just pack enough to take to the apartment? But then what happens when I put on an outfit and realize I don’t want to wear it that day or that the weather does not approve?
The angst.
Anyhow, we should talk again soon. When I have a chance to breathe.