Top Shelf Chaos by Tommia Wright

It’s amazing what happens when one decides to finally toss out the old to make way for space anew.

Well, that’s not entirely true – most of what was accomplished in terms of cleaning today pertained to cyberspace: email options and documents/files that bring the speed of a computer down to a crawl.

Don’t get me wrong – I understand the purpose behind a paperless society. (No, this does not mean I will trade my towers of tomes for a gadget that has less reliability than an Etch-a-Sketch, thank you!) I can see the promise in removing the nests created by receipts, recipes, random ramblings, etc. The fact that I found something dated back to – wait, I’ll hold off on the rest of that confession and say it’s old. In the chaos I’d call ‘occasional clarity’ (I do know where 95% of the things I have are 50% of the time, but it’s usually a call for that 5% I can never find 100% of the time), I do own a rather useful book or two on the subjects of organizing and decluttering. I’d call it the ‘OD pairing.’

I suppose if I were to choose which half of “The Odd Couple” I’d consider myself to be, it would be Felix in terms of practical tasks (really – my work life has the clean-line appearance that would make Mr. Unger proud!), on the personal side of things, I currently have the evidence to say I’m Oscar. No, not Grouch as in trash can (a handy thing to use with greater frequency if I’m to find the full floorspace below me). Mr. Madison’s ‘who-cares’ attitude comes in handy for some things – dismissing ‘negativity nests’ to get to the root of a challenge being one of them, for example.

Back to the ‘OD’ books. Have I read them? In part, yes. Did I commit anything useful to memory? Of course not. Will I someday finish them before putting them into the bag marked ‘sell’? First thing! Well, bagging them that is…once I’ve found them.