Clutter

Something about the cold wet weather -- and my year-end search for tax receipts -- turns my gaze inward to the clutter in my study: the piles of papers I meant to get to but didn't, the replaced office equipment still sitting next to the replacements in case the replacements didn't work out, the software CDs and manuals for three computers ago, the makings of the world's largest cord ball and, most of all, the accumulated detritus from years of callous disregard for the unchecked migration of stuff into my study.

They call it spring cleaning, but I do it in winter.

I always start with a burst of energy, dervishly sorting stuff into piles, tossing trash into trash bags, putting things in their respective places, setting aside things that need places to be put, clearing out unused drawers filled with useless things, emptying old papers out of file folders to make room for new old papers.

Then after an hour or so of making things worse my energy dissipates as an overwhelmingly indolent depression takes over. I'm now surrounded by new piles, larger than the ones I started with, and my task is looking Sisyphean. I'm staring at trusty old pieces of my life -- that old fax machine, the old computer, old cell phones, an old Blackberry -- and wondering what those things did, other than getting old, to deserve their cold wet death sentences. I've unearthed buried issues, deferred months or even years ago, that now cannot be deferred unless the guilt of denial isn't too overpowering, in which case they can be safely reburied. And I distract myself with ephemera from my past, old receipts and bills and statements, reliving once more the often forgotten pieces of my life itemized and quantified on those scraps of paper.

This reverie is a necessary step in my cleaning process, a ceremonial farewell to the remnants of my life. At some point, usually after a few hours of this, I snap out of it and, re-energized, start up again with the sorting, cleaning, organizing, trashing and filing.

Once I'm done, I behold the clean uncluttered surfaces of my study, my well-ordered shelves and nooks and crannies, freed of all (or most) of their buried issues, and I feel lighter, having cast off the heavy burden of my past, at least until I start accumulating the clutter again.