ORGANIZATION

This past Saturday we helped our friends, Nathaniel and Staci, prepare to sell their house. In hindsight, this was totally stupid. I should have staged an intervention or found a way to sabotage the whole house selling thing. We actually assisted with them moving away from us…out of state even. Should have packed their bags and drove them to NE.
I’ll get over it…someday.

I have witnessed that preparing a house for sale is NOT an easy task. I know that Staci has been crossing things off her list for months now. When I got home I decided that I needed to start preparing my house to sell…even though we won’t sell it for a few years. Better to start now, right? We have a decently large basement that is unfinished (aka. dog house) and can store lots of boxes and junk that shouldn’t belong in our spare bedroom or any other place the public could view it. But…for some strange reason our spare room has become the unloading dock for all of our crap. You can tell my in-laws or my mom haven’t visited in sometime…otherwise it would be in tiptop shape. Not only does it house a bed, tall bookshelf with books falling out of it, a tall (pretty ugly) filing cabinet, my old dresser from the 1980’s filled with my sewing materials, a round end table, a computer chair, a small desk with a computer on top and my sewing machine underneath, Lily’s old swing and bouncy chair, and a stuffed full cedar chest with piles of picture frames and magazines on top. I didn’t even mention the closet but it has about a million pictures between 2 storage containers and 102 sofa pillows. You would think our spare room is HUGE, but it’s not. It’s just stuffed full from wall to wall. Needless to say…I need to organize. Mostly because, although called a pack rat almost daily while growing up, I don’t like clutter. I like to live an organized life and I feel much better without having piles all over my house. I like free space. Yesterday afternoon I mustered up some energy and starting the tedious, but rewarding process. Lily helped and was quite entertained by all the fun, new things to explore. Who knew she could have so much fun with a glass jar and golf ball? I only got about 1/3 of the way done but already feel much better. Even though when Randy came to view my progress it looked like I had thrown papers/pictures all over, re-arranged the piles of junk and scattered the 102 sofa cushions all over the room. To me it was an organized mess…I knew exactly where I would start the next time I found the energy.

Other areas in my house that I will organize in the next few months include:
--my side of the closet (randy will be thrilled). That way when he walks by and creates a very mild breeze piles of my clothes won’t fall on the floor. I still say he bumped into them cuz it never happens to me. Plus I’m really good about shoving them towards the wall when the top of the pile starts resembling the Tower of Pisa.
--bathroom closet. First I need to save money cuz I’ll need to spend about $300 in plastic bins to organize all my hair products & other knick knacks (including my crimper from 1987—okay I am a pack rat but Lily might get a kick out of crimped hair someday AND it could come in handy for Halloween).
--coat closet. Right now it’s about knee high with shoes and that damn, HUGE, green exercise ball. Why? Why? Why, is that still in there? On the top shelf there are hats, gloves, scarves, etc. Plus, do 2 people really need to fill up a large coat closet? Every morning I battle with finding 2 shoes that match. Usually I find one right away and spend another 7 minutes searching- tossing boots, tennis shoes, slippers, dress shoes-- when, of course, the missing shoe always ends up right in front of me.

As I type this I’m really excited to get home and continue my organizing but, reality is, by the time I pick up Lily, get her dinner and feed myself, I won’t have that same excitement. Maybe with the pending blizzard (yes, #4) I will cross items off my list.