I had kind of an "a-ha!" moment yesterday, and I'd like to share it with you all. Two things happened yesterday - my daughter was home sick from school, and I happened to find our thermometer while doing something else.
When I found the thermometer, I was cleaning out a box in my bedroom full of miscellaneous stuff. I saw the thermometer, thought I might need it (since my daughter was sick), and put it on the dining room table, because that happened to be the first "safe" place I saw when I left my bedroom. I didn't end up using the thermometer after all, so it sat on the dining room table all day. Then it was dinner time, and I was clearing off the dining room table, which meant taking everything that was on the table and putting it in a big pile on the couch in the living room (including the thermometer, notes from school, bills to pay, and other miscellaneous junk that had accumulated there that I had started to sort into piles a few days earlier.) So, now I was thinking that I might need that thermometer this morning. But where is it? The pile on the couch got moved when someone wanted to sit down. Now it's a pile on the living room floor, and starting to get all spread out and messed up. So, again, I have to sort through it all to find what I need, which is something I had started to do a few days earlier when I was looking for something *else* (that time, a note from school). What's my point? If I had *specific locations* where the miscellaneous bits of my life lived, it would make things a *lot* easier: 1) I would be able to find what I wanted when I wanted it (I could go to the "Thermometer Place" and find the thermometer!) 2) I wouldn't have to handle things several times in the course of getting it put away. (If I had put the notes from school in the "Notes From School" place, I wouldn't have had to sort through the same pile of junk two different times in order to find the same note.) 3) When I am performing one task, I need to keep my eyes open, and not get tunnel vision. This is a hard concept to explain, since I'm not sure I have a handle on it yet myself, but I'll try. When I was cleaning out the box, everything in the box was "Stuff That Belonged Elsewhere". It wasn't the thermometer that belonged in a certain place, or a book of my daughter's that belonged in a certain place, or shoes that belonged in a certain place. And that was a problem, because all those items just ended up "elsewhere" instead of in their proper locations. I was so intent on moving them from my bedroom, that they ended up as clutter somewhere else. So, now I have a pile of shoes and my daughter's books in the hallway instead of my bedroom floor. If I don't stay on top of it, that pile will migrate in bits and pieces to the TV room or the dining room or wherever somebody happens to move it, and I'll end up having to sort through it again. I think this whole idea of seeing a pile of "stuff" not as one big pile that belongs somewhere else, but as individual items that have a specific home is really a big problem with me. Anyway, I'm procrastinating studying for a midterm exam, so I thought I'd share my latest decluttering thought with everyone. Have a great day!!! Pam. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Journey from clutter List Website http://journeyfromclutter.com Members Only Page http://journeyfromclutter.com/MembersOnly/MembersArea.htm Unsubscribe: email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word 'unsubscribe' in the 'Subject:' field to be removed from the main list. To Unsubscribe from the Digest version of the list send the unsubscribe message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
