Monday, January 05, 2009

Sanding my office

Ever sanded something meant to become a beautiful, permanent piece of woodwork?  That's how I feel working on cleaning up my office.  Oh.  My.  Gawd.  I have to put serious thought into every little bit I accomplish.  Since I can't just shuffle things from one place to another (I'm not clearing, I'm organizing and cleaning) I have to pick up a thing, decide whether to throw it away, or clean it and find it a permanent home, or put it in my garage sale box.  I'm putting a priority on creating space so that I can put away stuff I want to keep.  Bookshelf space.  Drawer space.  

Right now I need garbage space, so I'm going to run the garbage out.

At least I discovered a couple of boxes I got for cheap at IKEA.  O and I put them together, and he got to keep one and I kept one.  Space created--where the wrapped boxes were, and inside the box.  Now I have to figure out what would be best to put in the box (something that will fill or almost fill it without making that something hard to access, or something that will fill or almost fill it that I seldom use) and then find a space for the box itself.  If I'm really clever, the things I put in the box will, by their removal, create a space for the box or create space to move other things into that will create, by their moving/organization, a box-sized space.

Will it never end?!

4 comments:

Kai Jones said...

The mistake is thinking of it as a goal instead of a process. There's no such state as "organized." There is the process of organizing the chaos that is the world.

Kami said...

True. I'll try to keep that in mind. But I do have a goal, and that's to have the office be a beautiful, welcoming space where I can work without readily visible distractions, rather than a place where things no one wants to deal with collect and have coffee and multiply inside of temporary catch-all containers. It's like a rummage sale from heck in here. It would serve very well as a cautionary poster against stacking things to do later on top of other things to do later.

Kai Jones said...

Hey, I'm just trying to shift your paradigm here. Don't let waiting until you finish the project stand in the way of your creativity, because it will never be finished, and even if it were, the minute you start working it will mess up again.

Kami said...

So true! Actually your comment helped a lot. I'm now looking at cleaning my office like this: The office gets a constant flow of clutter coming in, and an uneven flow of organization that reduces the clutter. I need to increase my organizational flow, and also decrease as much of the clutter coming in as I can. Over time, the combination should lead to a nice office. So I try to do a little bit every day, and I resist bringing things into the office. When I do (dishes, camera, etc.) I try to take them back out and put them away as soon as I'm done with them.

I'll have a nice office yet!