WHERE THINGS GO - and sensory overload

When I read what others write about clutter and our Stuff, they sometimes mention how Stuff everywhere distracts our attention and tires us.  When we avoid Stuff Problems, we choose a box for this, a closet for that, a drawer for measuring cups; a different drawer for cooking tools.  And we close the drawer.

When  friend of mine developed cancer, she was lucky enough to have a therapist who told her: Put all the medical paraphernalia in a box and close the box.  Serious illness can drive us to distraction all by itself.  If it's inside us, we don't need any unnecessary reminders.

I don't have pills to take for my DCIS (yet).  So most of what I have is piles of paper.  So much paper that an important reminder for tomorrow almost got lost and ignored.

In desperation, a set up a file folder.  All my file folders and hanging files for health are red.  This one only says Mammo.

Now I think it should have two separate files--Diagnosis and Fighting.  If I later have to take the long-term medicine, it will go in the closet.

 I need my concentration for remembering to walk, for counting my exercise reps, for talking to friends and my granddaughter on the phone.  For showing up for appointments.  For remembering to say thank you.  For drawing some Christmas presents, which I love to postpone.

And of course, for remembering to go to Starbucks.

ASK SANTA TO BRING A CARPENTER (and where to take him shopping)

As a former closet designer, it is my duty to tell you a lot of clothes closets could use a kitchen designer, but a very experienced, truly innovative kitchen designer.  Maybe even better is shopping in a kitchen store.

Kitchen stores are a wonderland of gadgets and especially places to put things.  My last design department job was in a such a store.  There were interesting cabinets and shelves and gadgets that I could imagine in a wardrobe closet.

For example, I once did an attic wardrobe closet that had loads of floor space and not quite enough wall space for the shelves people had pictured.   But if I had worked in the kitchen design store first, I could have solved this with at least one of these . . .

Kitchen cabinet manufacturers now feature a magic "drawer" that is the world's tallest and skinniest.  It pulls out to reveal about six feet by three feet of shallow shelves on a backboard,  for skinny grinders or skillets too heavy to stack or platters or trays or whatever needs shallow, vertical space.

Think how many flats and loafers and driving shoes you could put in pockets on such a thing!  How many sandals!   Think how many scarves or belts (or neckties for Santa) would be easy to see and never get dusty!  Imagine never standing foolishly on a chair to reach the shoe boxes on the top shelf.  Never snagging a blouse as you reach to the back of a regular closet.

And where pull-out cutting boards are available, you could install one in a wardrobe cabinet to keep things neat as you choose the bottom sweater in the stack.  Or as a folding shelf.

You'll get some good ideas yourself.  The tough part is not spending your holiday money on a new kitchen instead of your wardrobe closet.

The Real Trouble Spot

In my beloved mystery novels (writer's heroin) there are pizza boxes and overturned beer bottles among the underwear on the floor in the suspect's place.  Oh, and the empty snack bag and half a sandwich.  Maybe the racing form.  The detectives usually expect this when they open the door.

I have no sandwiches on the floor.  There are several clothing items that will not fit in the dresser.  Also shoes (not as many as I'd like.)   My pink dumbbells. And my purple ones. Books.

And The Desk.

I am notorious for not being able to part with paper.  Even stupid paper.  Even duplicate letters insisting on signatures on duplicate petitions re health insurance.  And I have no bulletin board for the fairly intelligent letter from Blue Cross that explains everything except the dollar amounts for my policy.  If I file it, I'll never remember to call and chastise them.  Also, I have several receipts at any given time that need to be posted in my spending for the month.  Okay, once it was several dozen.

My daughter put Dale Carnegie's book in the bathroom so I can't pretend I don't know where it is.  He talks about a secretary who found a long-lost typewriter under the Stuff on her boss's desk!  I have not lost my laptop.  If you don't even have a desk, do you have a paper collection somewhere?

What I tell other people to do, and then forget, is that all those papers and books and the dustrag are sensory overload that my nerves don't need right now.  Or ever.

That treasure box of dishes I brought to Texas will not create gracious living by themselves.  They're no match for this desk and my worry at stoplights about whether I ever called that insurance company.

It's not about will power, it's what do I want and how do I want to see myself?  A friend of mine sets a good example on that score.  I just have to follow it.

COMPUTER CLUTTER or What Have I Done?

I may have thousands of files - mostly Word.  And too many Excel files of expenses from last year.  (Just dumped those monthly ones as soon as I wrote that.)

What is helping me cut out the losers in Word?  I just compared two resumes side by side and saved the best one using a great technique from a free library computer class:

In Word, I can view two documents side by side by: pressing the little Microsoft flag key in the bottom row of my keyboard at the same time I press one of the direction arrow keys.  Then do the same for the other document and the other arrow key.

This way I can switch back and forth as many times as necessary, move good stuff, and delete the boring stuff until I have one good document to keep.

Expect another secret I use in the next post soon.

OPENING CONFESSION

Several years ago I was starting my book on clutter.  My friend Kristen said:  We want to hear more of your story. 

That seems only fair, right?  So here goes.  I'm getting ready to move.  Again.  A dear friend gave me a gift of a great room to live in for a year.  The year is ending.  I am moving to another state.   Not enough mostly yard-sale furniture for a moving van.  So me, suitcases, laptop, cane, and UPS.

When I moved out of my old apartment, my family helped me shred mountains of paper, altough I'd had a computer for years.  Now I'm still throowing away paper. It's been embarassing.   Research findings that never turned into writing.  Writing that never got finished, some of which is already in the computer.  Some of which went on two thumb drives when the desktop outfit finally died.  Total, not go-to-the-tech died.  And what to do with fistfuls of medical insurance reports and bank statements and ugh.

What's even more embarrassing is that I was regretting saying goodbye to my right-height "desk," and my two sorta good, lamps, the burl end table and some dishes.  But the one thing I will need most in my new room, is my 'posture" chair and the ottoman.  And I don't know how to get them to Texas.

Since I recently had spinal fusion, I can't roll my wonderful rolling file, or reach into the file drawers, or get things off the bottom shelf of the folding shelves.  But I want to whine anyway about giving them up.

 Then the internet intervened.  There is a video called something about a changed coastline on the eastern US.   Forever.  I didn't even watch the whole thing.  It's not too hard to guess what it's like to watch your entire home tip into the sea.  No dryout, no rebuild.  Nothing.

That put my lamp, and file drawers, and folding shelves into perspective right away.  Especially since I once lived six houses from the other ocean, and I grew up on stories of what even Lake Michigan can destroy.

And I was also reminded of an article on the web maybe a year ago. The reported was in another country interviewing a woman whose humble dwelling had been filled with muddy water in a flash flood.  Her family was dragging some soaked items up a hill to where they would try to camp.  She told the reporter that she thanked God for letting the flood in the daytime, for had it been at night, they would all have drowned.   

More later. . .