Continuing the HaQ tradition of occasional confession: While looking for my stapler the other day, I found a recipe for squash, an old insurance ID card, and a book titled “The Organized Mind”. Right.

The fact that I had to search for an item that is bigger than my hand and bright blue, should tell you something about why a book in that genre might be necessary.

I did eventually find the stapler, but not without about twenty minutes of concerted effort. This is not the optimal search pattern. Maybe it’s because I use a filing system politely refered to as “geological”, otherwise known as the “file by strata” method. That is – everything is in layers and you just need to know how long it’s been since you last saw whatever you’re looking for to know how far down to go. Translation: there are piles of stuff in here and I think it’s in that one… or maybe that one…  Or maybe it’s in the other room… Sigh.

The upside of this system is that it does work. Most of the time. Well… sometimes. When I can remember when and where I last saw whatever I’m looking for. The downside is that it sometimes requires excavation to get down far enough to find it. And the resulting rubble can require considerable clean up. Which sometimes means that I’m reorganizing the stuff in the piles (translation: redistributing it based on criteria slightly less random than dates of deposition). The new “organization” may make a modicum more sense. The organization process can even mean that some of the stuff leaves the premises. That comes with considerable relief.

However (telling tales again), the new piles are not structurally different from the old piles and my sense of relief is tinged with the future regret of having to repeat the whole
process again. I know why this is, though it is a challenge to take the next step in resolving it. The challenge here is that to actually “organize” it is necessary to designate a real place for items to reside – a Home. That place is very unlikely to be in the third level of a vertical assemblage of random stuff.  So I know that my real task is removing enough stuff to be able to designate a discrete place to put the things I want to keep. And then putting them there. And then promising to do more of that. As soon as I locate those file folders and find the label-maker… As I’ve said before, I’m a work in progress.

Stay tuned for more on the Here’s a Quarter blog next week! As always, your thoughts and comments are always welcome – they are moderated (I know – adulting again), so they may take a little while to appear, but I read them all and appreciate that you were here. Thank you!