Clutter is FEELINGS

Ned came to do a massive clean out of my office today.  He told me to just sit somewhere and do something and he would do it all.  And he did.  The only direction I gave him was that he could only clear out one half and had to leave my desk half alone, since he would not be back for 2 weeks and I couldn't go two weeks with a makeshift office

All the while he was hauling boxes and furniture out, Walt kept asking me if I'd read my friend Debra's column in the paper this week.  I finally had him hunt for it and as Ned was still hauling boxes and furniture out, I read it.  It's called "It really is going to take a year to clear my clutter" and talks about a new program she has found to help her clear out her clutter.  She was starting with her clothes closet, and I was dealing with paper stuff ("all this crap") but it amounted to the same thing.

I immediately sent her a note saying how much I identified with just about everything she wrote.  She replied almost immediately and I loved this:

Those who say "Oh, I can help you clear it all out" just don't GET it.Clutter is FEELINGS.

That's IT.  That's why it's easier to clean up someone else's junk than your own, because you have no emotional attachment to it.  But when you have a room like this that contains everything high school memorabilia, to college stuff, to wedding stuff, to having babies stuff, to kids growing up stuff, to dead friends' stuff, down to today's stuff, you just keep finding stuff that you know is crap, but how can you throw it away?

How do you throw this away?

It's Jeri's drawing of all the foreign students who stayed with us in 1981.

I thought I could at least get rid of ONE thing when I saw Ned brushing cobwebs off a small pillow.  "I don't need that," I thought, seeing that the two corners of it were torn, I think by a dog.  But then he brought it in and it was this:

I think it was David's teacher who embroidered this drawing of David's onto a pillow.  Now how do I throw that away.  Or this photo of Tom with one of our favorite Brasilians, Marcio de Vassimon, standing in the snow.

How do I throw away the dozens of things I have already looked at today, and have not yet made a dent in what is to be looked at.

Progress has been made, and Ned let me keep half my office as is for now.  But the the other half of the office went from this:

To this:

Of course the living room (i.e., the "staging area") now looks like this:

Ned says that my task between now and when he returns in about 2 weeks is to fill up that brown garbage can at the right twice.  Then we do it all over again with the other side of the room.

I can't tell you how grateful I am to Ned for forcing me to do this much needed and long-overdue task.  But, as Debra says, clutter is feelings and I know that there is going to be much grief as I throw away some of this lovingly saved "crap."

Like Sleeping On A Cloud

I've been having neck problems for the past several months.  Not bad neck problems, but the kind you get when you sleep wrong and you wake up with a stiff neck.

It wasn't that I didn't know why.  I heard somewhere recently that you should get a new pillow every 3 years.  I've been sleeping on mine for over 10 years and it long ago lost its "oomph."  So I know that my neck problems have been caused by sleeping on a bad pillow.  It was just easier to deal with the neck problem than actually going out and buying a new pillow.

Oh, I thought about it a lot.  "I should go get a new pillow."  But somehow just never did.

But JERI is in California.  She arrived on Sunday and has been at Tom's house.  Alice Nan is driving her up here on Wednesday, but they will spend the night with Uncle Norm and Aunt Olivia and then come to Davis on Thursday.  Alice Nan is going to spend the night so she can go with us to have dinner at Todo un Poco and visit with our Mexican daughter, Marie, on Thursday night before going to see friends in Sacramento.

Spending the night!  Ack!  I just never think of folks spending the night here (except Ashley and Dave when they dog-sit for us).  With all the crap around here and the obnoxious dogs it just never seems to be a good idea.  Alice has been so good to host us whenever we go to Santa Barbara but I just feel embarrassed to have her here in all this chaos.

The least I could do was to get new towels.  

So I went to Target yesterday and bought 2 new towel sets, one for Alice and one for Jeri.  And while I was there, I picked out a new pillow.  It seemed so decadent and self-indulgent.  It's not an expensive pillow, but it was at least fluffier than the one I have been sleeping on and seemed to have more body to it.

Well, lemme tell you.  I went into the couch last night, with my new pillow and with an extra layer of blanket (since I seem to sleep more soundly under two blankets instead of just one) and I sank my head into that new pillow and felt like I'd died and gone to heaven.  At the very least I was nestled in my own little cloud.

I also fell asleep in less than 5 minutes, and except for my usual 3 a.m. trip to the bathroom, I slept the entire night through. I had been so comfortable that after getting up at 3, instead of moving to the recliner, as I usually do I went back to the couch and it was light before I woke up again.  I can't remember the last time I've had so much sleep--and awakened without a stiff neck.

I'm also happy to have new towels, as the ones I have been using since we remodeled the bathroom in about 2002 are no longer soft and fluffy...and when Jeri and Alice leave, I can use them!

I put the towel set on the bed where Jeri will sleep in the "big bedroom" and sat in a chair and just looked at that room.  I keep saying we aren't hoarders, but you'd sure be hard pressed to prove that by looking at this room.  Just from where I sat I could see things like a manual typewriter that probably hasn't been used in 25 years, an old VCR -- maybe more than one.  There are mementos of events from decades ago, long since buried, including quilts I'd forgotten we had.  There are boxes of stuff overflowing and baskets of stuff overflowing and don't evenget me started on the books.  I have my very own little Logos going in that bedroom.

But I understood how my mother, whose house was never untidy, would just sit, look around her house and moan "what am I going to do with all this crap?"  The problem is knowing where to even begin to reduce the piles of stuff we are never going to use ever, ever again.

And then there's the "Pepto Room," the pink room where Alice Nan will sleep.  It has become a storage room for empty boxes.  Somehow the  recycle-able Blue Apron boxes get stored here instead of being thrown away, but that's a good thing because I used lots of them to clean out closets and drawers recently.  But there are still more.  I should start putting "crap" from the big bedroom into those empty boxes stll in the Pepto Room.

Char just moved to a new place yesterday and has been going through the "what am I going to do with all this crap" angst for some time now.  But she did it and can now start collecting new crap.  As I sat in the big bedroom this morning I decided what I REALLY need to do is go away fro a few days, get Ned to supervise (not do the work) and hire a crew to remove everything from that room and throw it all away, leaving only the books and the photo albums.

But that won't get done.  Still, it's a lovely dream.  And I even have a lovely new pillow to have that dream on.