What he said

mbhunter wrote an article called Sixteen ways being disorganized costs you money.

I agree with all of them, but right immediately now I must confess the very last one hit a rather raw nerve:

Huge amounts of lost productivity. I’ve probably spent several months of my life looking for something that I’ve misplaced. Or I’ve been working at 25% capacity because all of the visual and mental noise of disorganization just wears me down; I don’t know what to do or even where to start on a project sometimes.

Let me hear the choir say, “AMEN!”

I have spent more time in the last few days alone wandering around muttering, “Keys…keys…keys…where the @*^&@ are my @*^&@ing keys?!” than I like to admit in a public forum. Ditto the checkbook, any jacket that isn’t so huge it could be used to protect an orange tree from frost, laptop cables, game cards and printer paper.

I probably could have finished knitting an entire baby blanket, if I had that time back.

I am not one of those people who was designed by nature to be organized. Or a do-er. Or a stick-to-it-er. In brief, I’m easily distracted. However sternly I say to myself, “OK! We’re getting rid of all those magazines today!”, what I will somehow end up doing is re-reading all the magazines, going online to research something said in an article I don’t think is 100% accurate, writing a fifteen page essay on why, while the author has a certain point, he is wrong-wrong-wrong, and then, forgetting that I’ve pulled the magazines off the shelves and scattered them all over the hall, come charging out of the office in the dark, late as usual, and trip over them.

My battles with Chaos are constant, and sometimes (usually) seem rather pointless. Especially when I’m wandering through the house cursing under my breath looking for my keys !!AGAIN!!, and finding nothing but huge stacks of abandoned magazines, newspapers, children’s artwork and homework, and lonely socks.

I have to confess, sometimes I really do get depressed about it. Angry, even. I’ve even been known to stomp around slamming cabinet doors and yelling things like, “Doesn’t anybody else know how to pick up a @*^&@ing sock around here?!” and “Why do you all hate me so much? Why? WHY?!”

Which is a bit unfair. Sure, I have some help with it, but honestly most of the mess comes from…me. I set things down with the best of ‘I’ll come right back to pick this up’ intentions, and then…well. I get distracted. One thing leads to another, and I never get back to it and ‘suddenly’ there it is. A pile of crap so high tourists are asking me to take their pictures in front of it.

Sometimes I look at it and I say things like, “That’s it. I’m leaving it. It can just stay there until the kids are all grown and flown! Then maybe I’ll be allowed to have a clean, organized house!!”

Sure, maybe. Then again, I may have umpteen zillion grandkids charging through the Den at all times, leaving a stream of homework, drawings, lonely socks and half-eaten oatmeal bars in their wake.

Sometimes I wonder if the cavewomen went through the same thing. Did they go around the cave picking up half-gnawed bones, stone chips and sinew fragments, snarling at their children, “Would it kill you people to pick up after yourselves?!”

Wouldn’t surprise me a bit.

But undaunted (or at least, unwilling to give up the war even if a few of the battles don’t go my way), I keep trying. I keep shoveling, even though the blizzard still rages. The mailman, school system, after school programs and stormy outdoor weather (which brings dead leaves, mud, soaking jackets, shoes and socks which are shed by the Denizens at earliest opportunity and dropped wherever they happen to be standing at the time) side with the Chaos and attempt to overwhelm me; but with the help of my mate I stand firm and continue the fight. Semper Pertinax!!!

Occasionally it gets ahead of me; occasionally I get ahead of it.

As long as it getting ahead doesn’t consistently coincide with company coming over, I figure I’m winning the war.

…wait!...

…what’s that rustling sound?...sounds like…like…a piling of junk mail, attempting a sneak attack on the left flank!!

En garde, villains!!