Re-organising My Life

You know what I was doing yesterday? I was refiling my journals in a box I had bought for the purpose. Basically my filing cabinet is imploding under pressure. And refiling journals from so many years (OK there are some serious gaps in 2006 and 2007, bad years, bad years all round) is fun.

I found an excerpt, a story I wrote that I thought I would post here but basically, I lost it again, shuffling around and organising my 20 or so journals.

I am redoing my room. I figure if I organise the space a little better it would be less likely to descend into chaos in just a week. My desk is covered in stuff. My side table is covered in stuff. My dressing table is covered in stuff.

Clearly what I need, as Sheldon would put it, is a new organisational paradigm.

So on Saturday (or was it Sunday?) I went out and bought two Ikea type boxes. So I could transfer my journals and my cards/wrapping paper/present stuff from my overstuffed filing cabinet. So far, as you know, I've only transferred the journals. But even sorting that out was a huge victory. Maybe today I'll transfer the cards and all. That should be fun. Am wondering whether to put those filing inserts to separate old cards from new cards and fresh wrapping paper etc in the box. The problem with putting those separations in is that I then can't close the box...so the fancy box cover goes to waste.

Anyway, that's not all I did over the weekend. I also went and ordered a cupboard and a single bed. I figure with a single bed, I'd have more room to maneuver in the room. And once it's come and I've dismantled the clunky double bed, donated the mattress to some charitable cause and sent the frame to Addy who asked for it for her guest bedroom, I have space for another bookshelf (I always stand in need of bookshelves.

And I've ordered a new wardrobe. The one I have is falling apart so I am giving it up and moving on up, wardrobe-wise. It would be nice to finally have something that finally fits all my clothes and allows me to separate home/out/work (work being the important bit).

I interviewed my friend Theresa about decluttering and she told me about how she decided some 18 months ago, not to buy a single additional piece of clothing (underclothing and shoes not included in this ban because they tend to wear out), a single book or any of those accessories such as earrings, which she used to be addicted to. I will be featuring the interview on my other blog, The Bright Side, when I do a decluttering week, which should be coming up very soon. In fact, she put a box in her closet and everytime she decided she would not be wearing a piece of clothing, it would go into the box, and when the box was full, she would load it in the car and drive to TMC where she would dump it in one of those "for charity" recycling bins. Likewise with books. As for papers, she allocated a day a week when she would go through her mail, file what was necessary and run everything else through her newly purchased paper-shredder. The shredded paper would similarly be stuffed in one of those paper recycling bins and could also be used as stuffing whenever she wanted to pack anything.

The sum total of this was a great feeling of well-being.

There are the pack rats and there are the minimalists. I guess I'm somewhere in between, because I do get sentimental about certain things and when I'm in one of my spring cleaning modes and give them away, I pine for them some years down the road when I suddenly remember.

So I guess one of the purchases that I will have to add would be a memory box. Although I'd be pretty fussy about what qualifies for it.

I guess I would like to be a little (make that a lot) more organised. My life is truly, "pieces of paper, that I'll get back to later..." and it seems to be about scrambling week to week to make the quota and avert crises, rather than having some plan as to how I am going to tackle said week, with equanimity.

I wanted to update this because it's been a while and the last time I wrote here I was spiralling downwards and guess what...I hit rock bottom, stayed there for a while and then started the long descent out.

Life is what you make of it.

And suicide is no longer an option.