Big room sized boxes

I was talking to my daughter a couple of days ago.  Rather, I was complaining about how difficult it is for me to get myself together.  I was telling her how my life seems to be so out of sinc with what I know and what I used to do.  I was telling her how the shows "Hoarding" and "Hoarding, Buried Alive" haunt me.  Most times I watch the shows and think to myself, how can they live like that?  I count my blessing that I don't have to live in a house with garbage everywhere.  Then I look around my house and I feel like I'm slowly becoming a hoarder and feel powerless to stop it. 

I feel like such a hypocrite for type-talking about all the things I do when I no longer seem to do them or get around to doing anything.  Kind of like when someone once told me.... "don't do as I do, do as I tell you to do".   Well, I don't want to be like that anymore.   If I tell someone the right thing to do, it should be because I've done it, am still doing it, and know it works. 

Reading through all my past blog posts, to create the links pages, I saw many of the organizing stuff I used to do then realized just how out of control my life has become.  Some things I've done in the past, very good things, are not being done because I can't seem to get around to doing them anymore.  Let me explain.

I've always been a very organized person.  Yet, right now my house is not organized and it got that way over and over again no matter how many times I organized it.  I've always lived frugally and know tons of ways to be thrifty.  I find myself spending money on things because I can't find the ones I already own.  I've always been a clean person.  These days I find myself throwing up my hands in frustration because I can't clean without doing something else first, then something else before that, then even something else before that.  So much so that I end up wasting time with crafty things instead.  I've always done DIY crafts of all kinds.  The crafts seem to be only an avoidance of what I really need to get done. 

Those who have been reading my blogs for awhile know how difficult it's been for me to keep my house from being overwhelmed with STUFF.  Time and time again I've cleared out things only to find my house piled up again with bags and boxes of STUFF.  There are times when I get so frustrated trying to have a neat and clean house I want to toss absolutely everything away and start all over with a completely empty house.  But.... you know what?  It would probably just get filled up with STUFF all over again.

While talking with my daughter she asked me to describe what the problem was so she could understand what my frustration was all about.  I started to explain it to her.  Light bulb moment!  DUH!  It finally dawned on me what is really causing the problem.  What I told her was.... "It's hard to organize things into pretty boxes under the bed if there's no bed.  It's really hard to group fabrics into organized dresser drawers when there isn't any dresser.  It's difficult to put craft items into nice containers on a closet shelf when there's no closet shelves.  It's hard to organize a pantry stash of groceries when there's no pantry."  You see my problem?  I do finally.  Duh!  Why did it take me so long to realize this?

It's said that all organizing starts with flat surfaces.  A shelf is a flat surface.  A drawer has a flat bottom surface.  A table is a flat surface.  A box, even one under a bed, has a flat bottom surface.  Well, gee whiz, no wonder I can't seem to get organized.  I only have one flat surface in two of my rooms and that's the floor.  Well no wonder I have bags and boxes piled up all over those rooms.  The rooms are like one big room sized box with one flat bottom.  I guess if you look at it like that, it makes sense that everything is organized in there.  Everything is organized into a bag or a box within the big room sized box.  What I really need is more flat surface dividers within the big room size boxes.  Yup, I need furniture and shelves. 

To be continued.....