Paper Jungle

 I am not a talented homemaker.  My decorating style is somewhere between hand me down and boho chic. My cleaning skills are not off the chart unless you are referring to the not even making the chart side of things.  Organization is challenging to me.  I have too many projects, too many irons in the fire at once to have a gracious, relaxed, serene space.

I am an everything out organizer.  I need to see things to do things.  I don't like to put things away until I am done with them.  This is a problem.  This is a big problem. It has become an even bigger problem during the pandemic when no one was at my house.  The messes grew and grew and grew.

As we started to come out of the pandemic, I realized that once again I might want to have someone visit or stay at my house.  At very least, I would need tradesmen and women to come in to fix things for me. (Like the light in the dining room that stopped working months ago.) I started to make attempts to clean things up.  I just wasn't getting very far. I didn't even know where to start.  I began to feel hopeless and depressed about ever cleaning my house.

Recently I needed a rare piece of paperwork for my financial guy.  It was a letter that I get once a year and on it my name is spelled wrong. He asked me to send a photo through email.  This would be easy for an organized person.  But, for me it was a monumental task.  I don't like to file paperwork.  I get a lot of it. I get double the amount an ordinary person gets because I get all of my mom's business paperwork as well as my own. Even though she is 100, she gets a lot of paperwork.

I pulled out everything.  I had piles of paperwork all over the living room.  I made categories.  I sorted between Mom and my own paperwork.  I threw away envelopes. I labeled file folders.  And I filed.  And I filed. And I filed.  It took me 2 days.  I found the letter with my name spelled wrong.  I found some insurance cards.  I found a recipe I had been looking for.  I found a lot of papers.  I put them in order. And today that mountain of paperwork sits in 2 boxes in my office.  It amazes me.

I find having finished that task, the whole house cleaning thing doesn't seem as daunting.  I have started to put away and organize things all over the house.  Of course, one the side effects is I can see how dirty the floors are and how much dust has accumulated, but there is an end in sight.

I will never be Suzy Homemaker (even if I did win the Betty Crocker Future Homemaker Award when I was a senior in high school).  But, I can see a light at the end of the tunnel whereby I may one day have people into my house again.  It may happen.  I think the key will be not letting the paperwork get out of control again.