My dining room table is currently in serious need of intervention. We went away the weekend before last and have another trip coming up in the near future. My dining room, which sits in the center of our house, has a lovely table that is supposed to be used for eating but is currently too full of my various piles of things to perform that function.
It started small, as I began preparing for our trip to the beach, which collided with midsemester assignments and warning grades. Papers to grade, grading sheets and class prep information took up residence, then disappeared gradually as I finished grading and returned the papers to their rightful owners. I dropped a few odds and ends -- extra grading sheets, blank copies of exams -- and ran, assuming I'd return all of those items to their various homes shortly.
Then, we got home from the beach, picked up the mail and started unpacking (not necessarily in that order). Nonessential mail (magazines, catalogs) landed "temporarily" on the table, keeping the school odds and ends company. Late last week, I went shopping for prizes for my Facebook party last weekend, and laid all of those things out on the table because I need to see things. After the party, I packed them up and took them to the post office but, again, a few stray items remained.
Now, we're planning a trip to go see our daughter at college. As I come across things I want to take along, I put them in a pile -- you guessed it -- on the dining room table.
Every time I walk by that table, I cringe. I also aim to pick up something and put it away every time I pass but, no sooner do I clear off a space than a new I need to see it task arises and something else gets dropped into that freshly decluttered location.
Meanwhile, life moves forward. New tasks with deadlines arise and the old task of clearing off my table (which has no external deadline) gets pushed aside as the clutter expands.
And therein lies the problem.
I rarely miss a deadline of someone else's making. While this may be admirable, professional or whatever else you may call it, it often happens at the expense of deadlines I've set for myself. And, when things get too busy, I stop setting personal deadlines altogether. Stuck in survival mode, I keep moving forward only to drag hot spots like my dining room table along behind me like so much baggage. Sprinkle in a few surprises like an unexpected crisis, illness, or phone call and that baggage just gets heavier. Or, worse yet, it gets abandoned in favor of mindless television or something equally non-demanding.
Just me?
I wish I could say I had an easy answer to this, but there is no easy fix. I can try not to let things pile up in the first place and, to an extent, I do. I can make sure I finish one task before starting another, which is something that's a major challenge for those of us with a drop and run organizational style. I can try not to overbook myself, bringing myself one step closer to finishing what I start, but I can't control the unexpected interruptions. All I can do is decide whether or not to engage in them.
Once the clutter gets dropped onto the surface, there is nothing to do but chip away at it and do my best not to add to it. These are the times I employ Give it Five!, or pick up one thing every time I walk past, or tackle the table one pile at a time.
Life happens. And for me, the more that's going on, the more likely I am to end up with piles. As there is nothing in my life I want to get rid of (cooking dinner notwithstanding), all I can do is try to keep on top of the habits that create the clutter and, once it appears, tackle it one stack at at time.
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