A Neat Space With All In Its Place

It is really not so tough to keep one's personal space clean. I've come to that conclusion lately, and maybe this is one of those getting older things. Being messy is less charming even as you're approaching your thirties, and then it just drops off a cliff. I don't make all the effort that I'd like or that others do, but I make a fair amount of effort. I think it's about always doing a little so that you never have to get Herculean about it.

Even now, I don't know if I could do it myself without some variation on a junk drawer. I don't have a drawer per se, but I have what amounts to the same thing. I have a paper grocery bag that contains a wire array of things which have no other place. I admit that's not a very elegant solution, but it does the job of containing a mess that would otherwise spread across the room. If only the debris field of a sunken ship could be so reigned in.

The rest of my things that have no proper place are in my closet, which is a conventional method if one that I feel I ought to be done with. Perhaps I will be done with it after the next time that I work up the nerve to get rid of a bunch of things. One must do that over and over again. We acquire things at such an alarming rate, but admit the end of their utility less quickly. It hurts to get rid of them, but feels so very good to be rid of them.

The reward is great. The process of cleaning is arduous, but eased in the short term by the psychological value of staving off even more challenging tasks. In the long term, those very tasks (along with all the other ones) become easier when you have a harmonious space with every where you  need it to be in order to be productive. I have that at the surface and even a little bit beneath. Someday I hope to be neat all the way to the core.