do some essential filing/sorting

K&G, knowing that V was arriving this week, offered to help out, & I took them up on it! They came over last night & helped me go through boxes in the basement. We ended up with two more bags stuffed full of papers for recycling, along with an armload of old newspapers; portrait boxes were moved to the high front-closet shelf; other boxes were stacked on our pallet in the proper corner of the basement for long-term storage. Several boxes of things that belong upstairs were brought up; I have a built-in deadline for putting all that stuff where it belongs, since we’ll be hosting a reception a week from tonight. K&G took our two big comforters home, & I gave G $$ to wash them in an industrial-size machine at a laundromat.

We got two basement areas completely cleared—whew!

It helps (1) to have a family member arriving soon (tomorrow evening!) to live with you, so you have to clean out the guestroom & find a new home for your art supplies, & (2) to have weird hormonal fluxes so that you are insomniac & headachy & need to stay home from work for a day.

For hours this afternoon & early evening it looked as if I was just moving things around a bit, not really making headway. Then suddenly, a few minutes ago, I had more than 2/3 of my worktable cleared (& the rest organized) & was able to wipe it down with a damp rag. The recycling bags are brimming again, a few things are waiting to go to the basement, art supplies are stashed under one end of the table, & the small easel sits in solitary splendor on the cleared-off surface.

My to-be-filed trays are overflowing, so it’s not as if everything is stashed away in its permanent home. A number of items still don’t have permanent homes. But I’ve achieved a level of order that makes me feel very happy! Yay!

sorting papers & magazines last night. The living room is looking orderly & inviting now. Yay!

on financial stuff through the late afternoon & all the evening. We’re having to take a turn as treasurers for our condo association, & it was important to catch up on those bills & records. And then I literally had months of our own bank records to go through & balance. Not exactly my favorite thing to spend time doing (I guess that’s obvious, since I was so behind!), but it feels VERY good to be done! In the process lots more papers were sorted, filed, or put in the recycling bag.

a good-sized stack tonight. It was pretty important, since I suspected our property tax bill was hiding in it somewhere, & indeed it was—that needs to be paid this month. Whew.

for accomplishing this: Devote 30 minutes to filing, sorting, or shredding every weekday evening that I’m home.

I apologize to neatniks, but I really do need this validation:

In the semiotics of mess, desks may be the richest texts. Messy-desk research borrows from cognitive ergonomics, a field of study dealing with how a work environment supports productivity. Consider that desks, our work landscapes, are stand-ins for our brains, and so the piles we array on them are “cognitive artifacts,” or data cues, of our thoughts as we work.

To a professional organizer brandishing colored files and stackable trays, cluttered horizontal surfaces are a horror; to cognitive psychologists like Jay Brand, who works in the Ideation Group of Haworth Inc., the huge office furniture company, their peaks and valleys glow with intellectual intent and showcase a mind whirring away: sorting, linking, producing. (By extension, a clean desk can be seen as a dormant area, an indication that no thought or work is being undertaken.)

His studies and others, like a survey conducted last year by Ajilon Professional Staffing, in Saddle Brook, N.J., which linked messy desks to higher salaries (and neat ones to salaries under $35,000), answer Einstein’s oft-quoted remark, “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk?” (From “Saying Yes to Mess” by Penelope Green, NYTimes, Dec. 21, 2006)

I do need to impose more organization so that MIA documents can be found. But I think I will release the need to get & stay completely caught up with filing/sorting. I do have more important things to do. So I’m changing the name of my goal from “catch up on filing” to “do some essential filing/sorting.”

how would you translate “uy”? “Wow” or “oh dear” or “my goodness” or what?)

I am going to revive serious activity toward this goal, starting in November—that dreamed-of time when my life will subside to habitability, with regular work hours & only a small, pleasing freelance project in bite-sized pieces.

Then I’m going to begin a rhythm of filing & shredding daily. So much recyclable paper has been piling up because I’ve become conscious of the need to shred anything that has my name/address on it. The shredder is a bit noisy, so I can take it only in small doses. I’ll have to make it fun by wearing earplugs & doing something enjoyable as I shred, like drinking my favorite tea & reading a good book.

another thought, as a break from the intensive packing/sorting. It is actually wonderful to save papers/documents/poems from the past, children’s school reports, family letters . . . As I was sorting mine this evening & throwing away a good many, I came across some notes my daughter wrote me after conflicts, when she was quite a small child. Wow—what an amazing little person. It has been very moving to run through many years of my life & my family’s life, just through quick glances. Two small file boxes have come out of the sorting, & two fat bags of paper for recycling.

Now, back to work! We pick up the moving truck at 7:00 a.m.—groan.

Packing to move, & all the as-yet-unfiled paper gets a quick sort-through because there’s no sense in moving extraneous pages. The recycle bag is getting fat—I like that. And I’m setting up files as I go for things that didn’t yet have a home.

It’s kind of wonderful to come across things one had forgotten about—a sweet note from a friend, an announcement of an award, even old computer games that my son used to really enjoy (I’m going to give those to him so he can decide whether to pitch or save).

I’m glad moving has SOME blessings, because in some other ways it has been very stressful.