Hopefully this will be a short one.
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No, it’s definitely turned into a long blog post. You will, and should, just skip to another post or whatever from your FB ‘feed’. This is long, and, very boring.
You’ve been warned.
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I’m a clutterer.
I hoard misc papers (no, not newspapers – who reads physical newspapers there days?).
Just papers, not going to explain any more but some of them come via the postal service; No, not those generic ads with no address (labels) on them; no, not credit card offers;
but, maybe a letter from a service provider saying we just tried to email you but it seems that email address has been closed (and then once you go onto their website, entering in your new email address, you still have this psychological, albeit irrational suggestion from your brain to ‘save’ the letter – ok, not to ‘save’ it, but, perhaps, ’just don’t get rid of it now’).
If I buy something off eBay, if the seller sends a shipping receipt with the purchased item, I keep the receipt.
A bank sends me a letter saying “hey brian! You’ve been a great customer, and we’re increasing your credit limit from 8 million pesos to 90 billion rials. The brain says, “save that, we might want to celebrate this fantastic event some day”.
No, I’m not organized such that I have ‘folders’ for all of these types of papers; I’m not that anal.
All I do, is place it (them) in the current pile on the kitchen table, or LR coffee table, or maybe, the pile near the nightstand.
Other things I can’t throw away, but ‘collect’: when going to the symphony, or a musical, I save (hoard, in this case, is too string of a word), the program. Don’t ask why, who the f knows why? In the beginning it was just to ‘keep track’, or as a ‘souvenir’ of what concerts I’ve seen, and/or when I’ve seen the them, etc.
Other examples?
I collect each year’s fortune five hundred mag, or model railroad mags, or DYI mags, etc.
Ok, I’ve gone on a tangent; let’s get back to the reason why I’m writing today.
Due to numerous (and, completely stupid) reasons, when one of these piles of papers grows too large, I throw them into a box; thinking I’ll sort thru them later.
I could fib and exaggerate by saying I now have 1,234.5 boxes of papers – and that way, I can obscure the the real number and not be embarrassed by sharing that nbr.
Over my adult life, and, just to allow myself some leeway here, I’m now including work-related boxes of papers (29 yrs of work journals detailing what I worked on each day; hard copy memos before email was invented; monthly status reports to managers), that I brought home from my Unisys days. This all leads up to an average of box or two per adult life year. I’ll leave it to you to calculate but you’ll need somewhat more than 5-6 pairs of hands when you’re using your fingers to count them. Ninety percent of these boxes are in the basement storage room, on shelves.
Where the f was I going with this stupid (but, very revealing) story??
Lol – oh yeah.
Two days ago, the house had a lot of clutter; papers on the kitchen counter; papers or whatnot on the kitchen table; a couch, with 1/2 of the seat cushions with piles of papers; a coffee table, with hundreds of CDs I was ripping (downloading/uploading??) to store their music on a hard drive in order to listen to them; another couch with a “plastic tub” (or three) of miscellaneous model railroad structure kit pieces I’ve been wanting to sort thru; a dozen books piled on the coffee table, another dozen books on the couch end table; a third pile of books on the nightstand;
One gets so overwhelmed with the frigging ‘mess’ (disorder), you just shut down.
You don’t know where to start; you’re unable to break the individual efforts into smaller, more manageable efforts.
Etc. etc. etc.
[I honestly do not know how I got this way – I wasn’t (totally) like this twenty yrs ago]=======
Ok, here’s (kinda) the punchline:
I received a text from Katie (Lailah’s mom) on Wednesday – “hey GranPaBrian – Lou wants to hang out with you on Saturday.”
Makes me very happy to hear this; now I just need to tidy the house a little bit before Saturday afternoon.
Friday afternoon, Katie texts me again: “will you be picking her up, otherwise, I could drop her off at your place?”
Now, here’s the thing: in July, I’ll be here in my new home, for two yrs. A few months after I moved in, Katie, her mom, and her sister had made plans to come over and see the new ‘digs’. But, some family emergency/situation came up, the plans went out the windows, and new ones were never made.
Long story short: Katie has never seen the new place – just my pictures from FB posts.
What does this mean??
It meant I had from late Friday afternoon to 1pm Saturday to not only do the minor tidying stuff I was planning on doing before Lailah arrived, but, now, I felt, I had to hide “all” my (main level) clutter as well;
yes, I got most of it hidden, or camouflaged, prior to them arriving.
Not going to (with this post), share my very, very special afternoon with Lou – that’ll come later in a separate post; but Katie, and Ruby, (and Lailah of course), show up, arriving exactly at 1pm yesterday; I watch them pull into the driveway and I met them on the front walk to greet them; it’s 33-34 degrees out, in late April, and not one of us was wearing a coat; big sigh.
Upon entry thru the front door, I think Katie may have fallen ‘in love’ with my new home (she, recognizing it was just ‘slightly’ bigger, and more ‘open’ than the other townhouse I’d lived in for 15 yrs when Rose and I were “together”), and how I’ve decorated it, etc.
Ruby had a fun time, immediately found the basement stairs, and went down to the (well-lit) dungeon – without a care in the world. After showing Katie the basement, while collecting up the precocious/ precious little one, we went back upstairs for Katie to see the rest of the place.
I’ve not seen Katie in several months – due to some things going on in her life; I’m glad she was able to come over, to see the place, to see me; i know I’d been missing her and I believe she had been missing me. She’s a very, very special, very beautiful person; a great mom to her girls. For those unaware, I’m not blood related to her little girls, and therefore not a “real” (by blood) grandparent to them; Rose (Lailah’s ‘real’ grandmother) and I were living together when Lailah was born (and her first few yrs); Katie and her family saw me as GranPaBrian. And, for that, I will eternally be grateful to Katie.
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I am tired now, but I promise I’ll update you on my clutter, my life of cluttering, and whom I’m donating my clutter to when I’m no longer able to add more clutter to my clutter.
More to come. Maybe helpful hints like – “if you’ve not touched your clutter in ten thousand yrs, it probably is time to pitch said clutter.” Or, “hold a clutter-free party, where you have an open 55 gallon drum on your backyard deck, on fire, where the clutterer and a thousand of his best friends each throws in one box of clutter, each night, for the next thousand years”.
Big sigh.
😱😉🤓🚧🌋 – there, of course, are zero emojis related to clutter; just what, exactly, is the emoji world coming too??
