It’s something I try not to do because, when Mrs. Griz cleans up after me, I can’t find anything for a while. In fact, I usually tell her to leave my mess alone. I even tend to growl at her a bit when she messes with my mess. But times were desperate and I finally gave in again and decided to let Mrs. Griz help me clean up my study at home.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. And the times were desperate because the piles of mail, papers and books were getting so deep in my study that I couldn’t even find the things I deposited there, much less things Mrs. Griz might have carried there for me to handle. When I needed to work, I often carried my papers out to the living room or dining room for some free table space and an empty chair in which to sit.
I had intended to clean things up myself, but the job seemed so overwhelming I just gave up and continued to push the whole mess off for another day. I even thought of just leaving it for my kids to handle after I’m gone, but they’d probably hire someone to haul it all away without sorting anything or shredding the confidential stuff.
Mrs. Griz wouldn’t agree with me, but I think my desk is the place everything finally comes before being sorted for some kind of final disposition. The problem is that I don't dispose of it very fast. You see,I bring the mail in and lay it on the kitchen table for her to see. After the kitchen space gets cluttered and she gets tired of the mess, she cleans it up by carrying it all to my study.
I could blame her but the real problem is that I tend to ignore the obvious need to keep up with it all, and the piles get deeper. Then, when it’s time to pay this bill or that, I have to dig through those piles of mail and papers to find the bills I need to pay. I seem to have a hard time finding the bills I need to pay and sometimes find other bills in the process - bills I forgot about and should have paid last week, last month or last….
Anyway, when I add to the existing piles more papers and materials from church and the notebooks and documents I bring home from work, the stacking space in my home office runs short and I have to start using the chair and the floor. Then the shuffling only creates a bigger mess and more difficulty in finding the things I need to find. To be honest with you, I think Mrs. Griz was starting to get worried that the mess in my study might begin to spill over and start cluttering up the rest of the house - something I know she wouldn’t have tolerated.
Perhaps things wouldn’t pile up on me if I would just sort them at the trash can in the garage before I ever bring anything into the house. But it seems a fellow now has to worryabout people gathering personal information from discarded mail and papers, so we try to run most of the junk through a shredder. But the mail and papers I accumulate seem to be a bit overwhelming for the shredder too. All those plastic cards tend to cause big-time jams which then require tools and a lot more time and effort to clear them. And if we wait to go through everything and have much to shred, the abundance of materials tends to cause our shredder to overheat.
Perhaps the post office could recover its losses if it would just install a giant shredder in each office and let folks grind up their mail for a quarter. Then I would feel better about leaving my mail there and not worry about someone getting my name and address and trying to steal my identity - though I’m really not sure why anyone would want to do anything in my name. If the market for shredded paper was good, the price of postage stamps might not have to keep going up so often, either.
Well, I gave in and asked for help. Mrs. Griz developed a plan and helped me clean and reorganize my home office. I think she even felt a bit privileged that I would turn to her for help and let her mess with my mess.
That poor shredder got quite a workout. We had to let it cool off a number of times before it would accept more. I worried, too, that I might have shredded a bill or two I forgot to pay, but then I figured a new bill would certainly show up in the mail if I had forgotten anyone.
A lot of misplaced itemswere either returned to their proper places or found a new home. I found some things that had been missing for months. I felt kind of like an archeologist, digging down through the layers to find out what was going on last winter, during the spring and summer, and month by month up to the present time. I even relocated some lost reference works which I was sure had somehow been lost forever.
It’s cleaned up now, and I’m trying to figure out how to prevent a relapse into disorganization and the accumulation of papers and junk mail. I thought of changing my address at the post office to General Delivery, Nowhere, Alaska; but I suppose advertisersand creditors would eventually track me down.
My mailbox will probably be full again tomorrow and the papers and clutter will begin to pile up in the kitchen. Then the junk mail, plus anything else I happen to start but not finish will end up in piles in my study. Soon the free desk space will be gone, and I’ll have to adopt a layered approach. When that doesn’t work, there’s always my desk chair and the floor.
I’d say, about April or May, I’ll have to break down and seek professional help once again from Mrs. Griz. I suppose, in the meantime, I’d better growl a bit when she messes with my mess so she feels really honored when I finally come back to her for help.
Randy Moll is the managing editor of the Westside Eagle Observer. He may bereached by email at rmoll@ nwaonline.com.
Opinion, Pages 6 on 11/07/2012