Personal revelation to the masses, #276

I know. You've been waiting for some post, ANY post, for nearly a week. And thrill of thrills, it's a personal truth-or-dare sort of post....yes! You will have dirt on me. Sort of.



I am organizationally impaired.


There. You have it.


My mother-in-law has been waiting for me to publicly admit this, I'm sure, so she can let out the breath she's been holding for 10 years, give or take 11 months....


I've been going through cupboards, book cases, drawers and glove boxes this week, in a vain attempt to create more storage space and purge nonsensical flotsam and jetsam. I've tossed (and this is an accurate count) no less than 43 margarine/cottage cheese/sour cream container lids whose partnering containers have long since been abolished to the Great Burn Barrels. I've pulled 2 black garbage bags of too small kids clothes for St. Vincent De Paul...some of them were size 18 months, and my son is 3 years old. You think it was time? I rearranged two bookcases, so that we could fit another 10-12 books in them. We don't dispose of books, here, because we read and re-read nearly all of them, every three years. (Okay, "we" being me, and Maggie. She can't read, yet, but she examines all books, even the ones without pictures. ) And I found about 30 magazines with recipes that I haven't taken the time to transfer to files. I got sort of busy having children, and moving cows. But it's time to transfer or toss.

I do like organization. I do like clean and neat. And my mother did teach me how to do all that.

It seems I get all bogged down, in my sorting and organizing. I fold outgrown children's clothes, and I see them wearing the clothes; sort of like home movies, for a mother's eyes, only. I start going through the tupperware cupboard, and my son wants to build forts with the margarine containers...well, sure! I start to tear out recipes from the magazines and get lost in the travel articles. I attempt to straighten books and end up surrounded by stories that are like old friends; "Oh THERE you are, Big Red! I haven't seen you since I got married. And here's Ivan Doig...wonder what's going on at English Creek. Ah, Rory Stewart and The Places In Between...in between what, I wonder? Perhaps I should take a peek..."

And I'm an absolute miser when it comes to buying organizational and storage containers. I don't like plastic, and as I stand there in the Rubbermaid aisle, I can think of about 297 things I'd rather spend $12.95 on. But when I get home, and stand in front of the closets, I think to myself, "Drats. Another bad choice made, with the right brain...." Plastic seems so icky, but try to find metal or wood organizers that hold up to preschool abuse, or that rednecks in trailer houses on the prairie can afford! So I shut the closet door....nay, back up against it with all my weight and will it to shut, with my substantial rear end....and promise to really, truly buy the Rubbermaid containers next time, cross my heart.

Please don't think I'm complaining, or trying to flake out, about where I live or how. We have been blessed with the perfect home for our family, and we have more than we need, in food, shelter and clothing. My management of these resources is the problem. Or, perhaps, mis-management.

At any rate, this week, in the Farmer's home, all the tupperware has lids. The laundered clothing in the childrens' drawers is the appropriate size and season. The books aren't double stacked in the 5 bookcases in the general public's view. The boy's trucks are stored neatly in the closet and the princess has her dresses hung color wise.

And tonight I will have dreams of rejected piles of junk, piling on top of me, in retaliation for the purge. (It will probably just be the cat, sitting on my chest.....)