Clump #178: Clear boxes from son’s room and flatten for recycling.
Day three of my Bedroom Blast Challenge, whereby I clear out the accumulation of stuff in our son’s room one clump a day. The goal is to welcome him home from a year in Europe without following up with: “Now go clean your room.”
Clump #176: Start Bedroom Blast Challenge; sort out electronics.
This is a post about stuck-ness in various forms. Some readers might remember the goose with the rotating wardrobe I drive past in Strasburg, PA on visits to my mom. During the end of winter, and what should have been spring, I had begun to worry about the goose’s clothier … the outfit hadn’t changed in weeks … maybe months? This photo was taken a week ago, at the beginning of our last (LAST) snow.
Clump #174: Get a clump to Goodwill.
So far I’ve had a good record for using my tickler file. My strategy: I’ve promised myself I will look inside the day’s folder before I look at anything on the computer. The two are close to each other, so it has been a cinch … kind of a habit hook.
Today’s folder contained a couple of Christmas carols that my younger daughter had found in a whirlwind of room cleaning. I know just where to put them! And, even better, I’ll know just where to find them next December.
I developed the other part of my strategy on day two, when I skipped looking in the folder because I knew there was nothing inside. It occurred to me that I need to know there will always be something inside a day’s folder in order to maintain the habit … thus, a second promise. I will put my to-do list for the next day (using discarded pages from a page-a-day calendar) in its folder the night before, and do it before I turn on the television, pick up something to read, or otherwise chill for the evening … a nightly habit hook bookending the morning one.
On today’s list was a trip to the Goodwill. My husband had weeded a bunch of clothes out of his closet , and my younger daughter was galvanized to do the same, adding books and other sundry items …
including the cage and hamster toys for her dearly departed hamster, Steve. I had no idea he had a “HAMTRAC.”
Giving these things away felt good and made walking into her hamster-barren room much easier. Let’s all imagine Steve enjoying an awesome HAMTRAC in the sky.
It was a perfect day for spring cleaning and crossing off errands from the list:
warmer temperatures, bright blue sky, and puffy clouds like bright white linens snapping in the breeze.
Clump #173: Finish “do” tasks; take down red outdoor decorations.
I might just have to post a running tally like the industrial “__ Days without an Accident” signs to keep track of the number of successive days I have checked the tickler files pictured yesterday. I can crow that I checked my “Day Eleven” folder this morning. One Day!
In it was an old bill causing creeping discomfort. (Radioactive!) One of those, “I’m-pretty-sure-we-paid-this…” bills, and it turns out we had, but in the onslaught of neglected paper, who could tell for sure? Well, now I know. It was a great comfort to speak to someone in the billing office and hear, “You’re all paid up.” Phew. I stared down and removed several similar items from the list.
Driving through Lancaster County today, not only were the farm fields predominantly brown instead of the all-pervasive white, this was the vibrant scene of businesses opening again:
And then this! My first flower sighting of the season!
Hallelujah! Sunshine to the soul.
I was inspired to take down our Valentine’s Day wreath featured in an earlier post:
Also the red ribbon threaded through window boxes before Christmas:
Soon enough will be spring pansy time here.
I put up a wreath made of paper roses …
which I found at a paper shop that was advertising half-off Valentine’s Day merchandise.
So wonderful to be in an old-fashioned stationery shop. I’ve noticed we no longer have “stationery” aisles in grocery stores; it’s now “office supplies.” A significant cultural shift. I marveled at the shop’s rainbow of snail mail products:
I’m sure this wreath was meant to adorn an indoor setting, so I sprayed it with a water repellent before putting it out.
It will proclaim to the world that a Paper Clutter Conquerer lives here!
Clump #172: Fly through “Do” pile.
I’m experiencing a bit of whiplash right now. My younger daughter pounced on the “Do” pile today and said, “Let’s just sort this into different sections.” Three categories presented themselves: items that could be taken care of in the house (phone calls, etc.); items that needed to be taken care of outside the house (errands); and things I needed to send out.
I thought sorting would be a good start, and imagined chipping away at the pile in the coming week or weeks. But my younger daughter’s energy and perseverance drove me to take care of most of the pile today! It was like having a personal trainer by my side.
She even tore through tasks I’ve been meaning to get around to for an eternity. Here she is entering the packing list for our annual week at the lake into Excel. She wrote up another list for holiday dinners at my mom’s place. Now we won’t forget that one thing … one year a corkscrew, last Thanksgiving a carving knife, etc.
The mail came in, and we tore through that, too. I had the perfect file waiting to save instructions on how to handle electronic recycling. The car registration and sticker went directly out to the … car! For once, not set aside to fall into the paper void.
I was amazed at how quickly and easily, with the right attitude (okay, the right helper with the right attitude) things I’ve put off for so long just magically got done. I had cut this article out of The Philadelphia Inquirer ages ago about volunteers who perform Reiki for cancer patients as a part of Gilda’s Club. I had been interested in volunteering, and suddenly all the barriers to do so fell away when my daughter found the application and background clearance forms. I was able to get the criminal check done online, almost instantaneously (“No Record”), and could print out the others.
We also resurrected a filing system I’d previously failed to keep up. It’s sort of a tickler file for items that will need attention in the future, and — ideally — keeps them from becoming lost or forgotten. The file for tomorrow (eleven) holds a paper that’s a “to-call” reminder for an office that was not open today. Each day of the month has its own folder …
As do the months of the year, for papers and reminders for the months ahead. The system is only successful if I consult the the files every day. Will I be able to do it? We shall see.
While at the post office I asked if they had any pretty stamps. The postmaster showed me these flowery ones. I had to get both:
The vintage seed packets seemed appropriate on a day when my daughter and I dug in with a host of actions sure to reward us over the coming months.
Clump #171: FINAL sorting, filing, shredding, and recycling of household paper.
Okay, folks … this is the last call. All hidden piles of paper secretly stashed away during bouts of insecurity before guests arrive — come out into the light of day!
This is big … really, really big. My darling younger daughter (who, you might remember, made this job manageable by sorting through the mammoth paper-glacier on her winter break) is now home for spring break and, fittingly, helped me finish the project.
In an effort to give each piece of paper a home, these were new file folder titles that my papers fell into: How-To; Possible Purchases; Spiritual/Mental First Aid; Travel; and Writing. I have separate accordion folders for Recipes, Sheet Music, and Instruction Manuals, plus a box in the basement for “Posterity.” (I know, a deferred clump for a future day.)
Once again, the “Do” pile received some more entries. I won’t need to wonder what to “do” for my next clumps.
Funny and ironic findings kept us laughing, like the to-do list with “bedroom piles” on the top (not crossed off, I might add) …
And a book I had ordered from Chinaberry called Clutter Busting. I even read it, to the end. I am much more apt to read about a problem than do something about it … until now, that is!
Another note about the egocentric sense I’ve had that my slow paper-clearing project has been synced with the insufferably long winter we’ve been enduring. As of yesterday, I am calling that winter finished. I say this not only because my piles of white have been eradicated or tamed into submission, but because nature is telling me spring is really coming. I drove by a small herd of cattle on the way to see my mom, and they were definitely feisty:
I couldn’t get a shot of one doing a skip and a hop, which happened several times while I watched.
I was also hearing lots of birdsong. The animals know.
Poor, salt-sprayed roadsides are finally giving way to brown.
An old gentleman with whom my mom and I dined yesterday started a conversation, in a soft, Georgia accent, with: “Did any of you ladies ever go possum hunting when you were in high school?” It was that kind of a spriny, spunky day.
Sorry for my (even imagined) part in prolonging this way-long white season. We might get April-fooled by another snow, but it won’t stand a chance. The living forces have been stirred, and there’s no turning back.
Clump #170: Sort out papers stuck in basket.
So this was the shove-it-all-together basket from last weekend. Let’s call it my anxiety basket. Company was coming, I needed to make these things disappear, and I had run out of time to sort them and put them away … my achilles heel habit. On the top, I noticed a business card from a friend who is a professional organizer whose business name is Sorting Things Out. A little wink from the universe?
Since then, I caught a bad cold and have been feeling under the weather (which is a feat these days!). But I gave myself a kick in the pants to bust through the basket. The biggest pile (left) were all easily recycled, and next to it, a pile of our address labels ready for shredding and recycling. The other two piles are for my husband and me to look at and decide what to do with. Since we are both recovering from colds, this seemed enough for now. I had broken through.
Another little wink was the card now on top of “my” pile:
And briefly, here is today’s update on our endless winter. Even the snow is trying to form itself into plants and trees:
And a t-shirt vendor’s warm, bright colors defied the jaws of a snow plow:
Victory will be ours!
Clump #169: Another (!) paper pile is cleared.
Yesterday, while preparing to have company for dinner, we found a bunch of — PAPER (Dun-dun-dun!) — needing to be dealt with. It was almost more than I could bear. This is precisely the genesis of my paper problem: get ready for company and, in the cleaning process, sweep together excess papers hanging around, shove them into a hidden space (closet, basement, etc.), and vow to get right to the clearing and sorting as soon as my hostess duties are over. (Yeah, right.) Thus the cycle: stash and repeat, stash and repeat … I end up with a paper jam the size of which I just conquered in the month of February.
I had diligently kept my blinders on the twenty-eight piles I’d vowed to get rid of, but other paper had weaseled its way into our house. I was so discouraged after all that paper-work to find myself in the same darn place.
I came home this evening to find my dear husband starting to sort yet another pile:
Do you remember the song “This is the song that never ends”? It came on at the end of the television show Lamb Chop’s Play-Along, with Shari Lewis and her puppets. This is how I feel right now. (Good Lord, when I googled the song, I saw a youtube video that boasted ten hours of it! Oy!)
I have also been feeling as though there’s a psychic connection to my paper purging and the endless winter we’ve been experiencing this year. Right now we, and possibly you, are bracing for another big snow. When will it end? I thought that instead of a bright color for pigment therapy today, I’d wave the white flag. Snow on our street looking like threatening waves of ice:
I’m fighting back the tide with my own whites, magnolia:
Iris with just enough color:
Same with a ruffly orchid:
A flower that reminded me of exploding fireworks:
And ballet slipper-colored roses:
My new motto: don’t fight the endless snow (or paper) … grin and bear it.
Clump #168: Sort out and file final paper pile — number 28 of 28!
The last of the 28 piles is finally put to bed. It was one I had feared. So many articles clipped from newspapers and magazines through the years:
(“The Role of Radical Acceptance” is staring at me from the top. Its subtitle, “You can’t fix the ones you love, so focus on fixing yourself,” could be the subtitle for this blog.)
I did toss out a considerable amount I was not as interested in anymore, like the latest diet recommendations that change at least every year:
The rest I sorted into categories. I was surprised at how happy I was to see many of these, like getting reacquainted with old friends. I did take the suggestion from a commenter to make a “One-of-a kind” folder, where the birdhouse certificate will reside:
This pile I didn’t file. As I’ve said previously, “Action” folders turn out to be the complete opposite. Better to label such a file: “Out of sight, out of mind.”
And speaking of labels, I’m going to have to get some more for the folders I assembled. For the time being, I used post-it notes. Now when I’m trying to remember an article about the neat place I want to visit someday, I will simply look in the “Travel” folder. Wow … imagine that!
Proof of the table cleared and ready for people to use it:
I turned the calendar page over today, and this was the March message from Thich Nhat Hanh:
Twenty-eight steps did, actually, produce a miracle for me. The lotus blossom pictured on the calendar reminds me of photos I took when I was at a garden center last year:
I was thunderstruck by the sublime beauty …
in such a commonplace setting.
Clump #167: Sort piles 26 and 27 of 28 … almost there!
Yesterday’s post was so long and rambling, I’m condensing the next-to-last two piles into one. The first contained medical statements and bills; on the right are the ones we’ll keep and, as usual, the bigger pile is the one going to the curb.
Second pile, for which I could have almost used the same photo, contained paperwork from charitable organizations, and a dash of EZ Pass statements. Most we shredded and recycled, while a few, detailing gifts, we filed in the appropriate tax folder.
In both cases, so much was easy to do away with, but each contained just a few items requiring action, or papers about which we would definitely be saying “Where did we put the …” for an immediate need. Now — we know just where they are!
The pigment therapy color for today is red. Below, my younger daughter at the Montreal Biosphere, spotting her mom at it again with the camera. She’s the most beautiful flower of all! (Said with complete objectivity.)
One thing I’ve been noticing about red is that a little goes a long way.
Like these berries artfully arranged on a shed door:
Or this red barn roof:
Sparking up a field of taupe:
Or white:
Or white and blue:
Like the William Carlos Williams poem, The Red Wheelbarrow:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
Clump A Day 