A fury of organizational spirit has taken hold of me in the past few days. My brain is racing its own course through the upcoming 2011 tasks, especially my coursework and the plays which demand so much mental attention. Meanwhile, my body urges me to reduce, reuse, recycle -- I've reorganized almost half the kitchen cabinets so far and it's exhilarating. We now have a spice drawer.
We're about to have a "baking tools" drawer too, for I have my eye set on that junk drawer at the end of the counter that serves no purpose. We threw extra keys and house numbers into it the week we moved in 8 years ago, and it's never been revisited.
I've sorted all the gift bags from Xmas into their own holder (a larger bag) and stowed it next to a companion bag of general-purpose gifting supplies in my closet. (That's light years ahead of the "pile" that ruled a shelf and came tumbling down on my forehead last week when I was trying to wrap Xmas gifts.) The Christmas decorations are in a neat pile waiting to be returned to their newly organized home in the garage, and I've got my eye on cleaning out that clutter-trap (the garage).
I've got 6 boxes of antique piano rolls (which accompany my genuine player piano from the 1920s) and I just don't need 2000 rolls lying around. Time to type most of them into a list and see if the auctioneer in Florence, SC can do anything with them. (Not surprisingly, there aren't many antique dealers who handle player piano rolls.) I do plan to keep some oldies-but-goodies, the ones that always sat on top of the piano when I was growing up so we could pull them out for instant guest entertainment during the rare times we had people over.
I've noticed something about myself in all this -- I don't get much work done when it's dark outside. In just a few days (TOO few, IMHO), we'll be back to the grind at school and I find myself with precious little daylight once the school day and play rehearsals are done. It's a constant battle to get my mind or body to do
anything after sundown in the wintertime. I hate it. So I'm whacking away at all the projects I can manage during these precious few hours of day.light. Next week arrives far too soon.
My goals this year for
things --
- Handle everything just once, if possible. I can't always sit down and "do it now," but I'm getting better at opening the mail on sight and throwing most of it away. I don't need every paper statement that comes through my hands, and we don't use most coupons (because we don't need to be spending money eating out).
- Be a blessing to others. For example, I hope to pass along most magazines after I've read them. Only a few deserve a home in my library; most offer interesting ideas, but I can bless someone else with a free read when I'm done. I've got some kitchen gadgets too that just aren't part of my workflow. They're heading to someone else.
- Spend the 5 or 10 minutes I have once in a while on chores and cleaning, and absolve myself of the guilt of not spending 6 hours a week cleaning my house. I don't have 6 hours. I rarely have 2. What gets done, gets done. What doesn't ... can wait.
What are your ideas for keeping clutter at bay this year?
Post a Comment