prairie point

organization

When I was in college I could pack everything I owned into a VW beetle. And that included my books and quite a few albums (LPs - yes, I am that old).

I am searching through my belongings now looking for an extra memory card for my camera. I need it because all of a sudden I can't transfer my photos to the PC and I can't tell what part of the process is broken. I remember someone telling me once that a card can get damaged from being inserted frequently into the card reader. If I can find the extra card I can test whether that is the problem.

So I have been fondly recalling the days when my clutter was so much less extensive. In my heart I am really a neatness freak. I prefer having a clean desk and a clean garage and toolshed and knowing exactly where everything is. I just don't have a clue how to achieve that. I think the problem is having too many things and not enough places to keep them.

The trouble with that theory is my wife. She must own just as much stuff as I do and I assume has an equal amount of space, yet she apparently seems to know where everything is.

Part of the blame lies with preferences. My desk is littered with papers which could be filed away in a perfectly good file cabinet, but who would want to spend their time doing that?

I read once about how Andy Warhol solved the problem of clutter. Every five or six weeks or so he would get a cardboard box, carry it around and sweep everything into it off the coffetables and desktops, then seal it up and store it in one of those storage buildings you can rent. There is some college back East that got all this stuff in his will and they are going through it box by box, cataloging it. They are finding letters, checks, bills, loose change, books, videos, everything you can imagine.

With me things seem to get stuffed into drawers. Searching through the small drawer at the top of my bureau I find a tangled mess of credit card receipts, business cards, scraps of paper with important reminders, ballpoint pens, and pay check stubs. This is where I empty my pockets at the end of the day. At least there are not any real checks here. When I first began working they gave out real checks instead of using direct deposit. I would stuff those in a drawer too until I got notices from the bank that I was overdrawn. Also in here are handkerchiefs and an envelope full of some kind of seeds that I have collected, an old pair of eyeglasses, a pocket knife, a wristwatch with a dead battery, a small assortment of nails and screws left over from household projects, cough drops, some kind of cold medicine, chapstick, a Star Trek communicator badge, a couple of floppy disks, and keys to a car I no longer own.

I have decided that this is one of the two most likely places to find the card. The other is my desk drawer which has a different but similar collection of items. Another option is that it could be in the box that the camera came in. In that case it would be packed away somewhere in a closet. I am going to save that option for last.

Posted by Bill Hopkins on May 14, 2003 09:29 PM