Susan

After looking at several topics for this week’s BLOG, I finally decided to write about Susan.  Susan has a business Forest for the Trees.  Clients of her business want to have certain areas of their life organized – or, sometimes, re-organized.  And, that what it was for me – re-organized.  I have some sense of organization.  The kind where you say, “Don’t move anything from my desk.  I know where everything is – even if it looks like a never – ending mess.”  Because, it is a never-ending mess.  The kind where you just keep stacking things on top of things until you have layers and layers of paper.

I’ve been using a card table for a work space for months.  Paying bills, writing BLOGS, children’s stories, letters – you name it, I’ve written it on this table.  Clutter and all.

Susan worked with me for some time before she moved to Arizona where her son, daughter-in-law, and, now, grandbaby live.  She seems happy, there.  But, I still wish she lived in my city.  Then, I could have her several times a week.  That’s probably selfish of me, but I wish it anyway.

For years, Susan worked for the US Forest Service with a nephew of mine (small world, isn’t it).  When she retired, she began this organizing business, and she is good at this job.  She came to spend part of her three-week vacation with me, working at organizing what I’ve been unable to do.  For five years, I’ve been trying to get this house to look like someone lives here and cares about it.  To no avail.  It seems that I’ve just been moving things from here to there.  And, even though I am pretty good at organizing, I wasn’t making any progress.

So, she planned to spend some of her vacation time with me.  And, for three days, we worked – worked hard – to get some of it done.  I was interested in watching her work; in seeing her think through what the priority was.  Goodness knows, we couldn’t do the entire household of rooms during the time she had to give to me.  After reviewing every room that needed us, she decided  the most important would be the room where I work most.  It’s what I call the TV room, because, of course, it has my largest, most important TV.

This is the room that contains books (probably, only two hundred of them, since I gave away more than four hundred about a month ago).  It has children’s books.  Poetry books.  All kinds of poetry – what we think of as regular poetry, haiku, haibun, tanka, etc.  In addition to the paper-layered table that I work on, it has a charming antique desk.  A desk that I really want to use – mostly, because it makes me feel good when I work at it.  I think it makes me feel like a real poet, writing real poetry.  Of course, when it is also layered with papers and other stuff, attempting to work there is futile.  The room’s closet also has been storage for three-ring-binders with important information that I want to keep and use.

A wicker love seat and chair are also in the room.  The love seat is Lady’s safe place.  I’m no longer permitted to sit on soft chairs, so I have my “harder” desk chair.  I’m showing you some before and after photographs of the work we did.

Susan said that we’d start in the TV room to assure that my workspace would be safe (with no boxes on the floor to trip over), and I could navigate the area without fear of falling.  Falls are not good for eighty-four-year-old people.  I realized after some time that she was working one wall at a time, progressing around all of the room, clearing, cleaning, and arranging until the wall was satisfactorily working for the room.

We were working together; she listened carefully to what I had to say about keeping or throwing out stuff. And, believe me, we had stuff to throw out; remember my rule – something has to leave my house, every day, and never come back.  There was paper that I had not even looked at for years.  So, I made a lot of decisions to either keep or pitch paper and notebooks, etc.  I didn’t try to second guess my decisions to pitch papers by reading them.  I decided that, if I had not accessed them in all of the years they had been in the binders on the shelves, I didn’t need them.  It was not easy to get rid of things that I’d had for years – even though I didn’t know what the pages said.

For three days, we worked on this room.  And, I still have a little more to do.  But, I will get it done.  In the meanwhile, I’ll write in my “new” room.  I’ll write for children.  I’ll write poetry.  And, I’ll write my BLOG.  Thank you, Susan!

And, then, I’ll only have five more rooms on the first floor.  Let’s not count the basement

Be Safe and Be Well

The Cranky Crone

Thoughtful comments are appreciated.