Getting Organized

By Marian Brennan Pratt

I’ve decided to get organized – divest myself of all the crap I’ve accumulated over the years.  Well, maybe not ALL.  See, there we go.  You say you’re going to do it and then immediately you start to backpedal.  Well, we’ll see, maybe I can throw some stuff out without noticing.

Clothes – great place to start.  That green plaid pleated skirt I wore in high school.  Now where is that?  I made up my mind when I started this project that I was tossing that skirt – now I can’t find it.  So here’s a pile of stuff that doesn’t fit – at least I don’t think they do but I haven’t got time to try them on so I’ll just keep them in case they do fit.  This other pile is stuff that’s out of date. Oh, here’s the skirt……and some pictures……….oh, look at this picture from St. Stephens High School with all my buds.  I need to get rid of these – or maybe not.    I could prove to my kids that I was thin at one time.  But back then I thought I was fat! Hmmmmmm.

I’ve got 19 big books of photos so I set them aside for a future project to thin them out.  I set them “aside.”  Where is “aside” in your house? Is it away someplace like the attic or the basement where you probably will never see them again? Well my “aside” is on the floor in the Living room so I have to find a better place because they’re in the way there – so where? – back on the book shelves where they started.  I’ll put a sticky note on them that says “project”.

Now I go into the Kitchen and I open one of the drawers; going to get rid of the stuff I never use.  Wow, I don’t even know what some of this stuff is, so I guess I don’t use it – well, there’s that wine thingie but I could never get it to work.  I’ll keep it and ask somebody how to work it.  How come there are so many lids for stuff I don’t have and the stuff I have doesn’t have lids.  Why is that?  Is it like the socks that I only have one of? This big plastic thing is to store veggies.  Only I never get around to washing, scraping and/or pealing the veggies so maybe that’s something I don’t use. But I have veggies in the fridge so I better put another sticky note on the celery that says “project”.

Things are going pretty well, don’t you think.  Now I need to stop and go up town to lunch with my “girls”.  Don’t want to miss anything.  But, I’ll be back about 2pm and I’ll get started on this “organizing” again.  I promise!

Ok, I’m back.  I just need to check my e-mails and then we’ll get going. This first one is from Elaine who picked “closets” for her today’s job. The message reads: “You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment when you know that you just aren’t going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.” How profound is that? Sounds like “closets” are over. Next there’s a message from Ginny. Since her family members are big Tiger fans, they have decided they need to “Stop and smell the hotdogs”. Now, I ask you, does it not seem that these messages were sent directly from a place higher than Google? Besides that, I need a nap ………….and maybe I’m organized enough already.