Surfaces

My attempts at organization are legendary.I never quite get it right. I will stuff drawers with useless things. Coupons from three years ago,blurry photos of someone else's kid,menus from restaurants that I don't even like,half a deck of playing cards. Every drawer is like that. My house is an internal mess. You would never know it to look at it. It is dusted and vacuumed and looks great on the outside.

I have a plan. While I was cleaning and sorting over at my parents I found a pile of unused boxes and some packing tape. I have dumped the entire contents of every drawer into 12 boxes. I marked them clearly so I know which room they belong to and I have stacked them neatly in the back basement. Everyday I go through a box,one item at a time and I either do one of three things with them. Goodwill. Trash. Keep. It is so liberating.

I have read so many books about organization. I recently got this one out of the library. I was reading it in the car while Fabio and I Christmas shopped. He took a hard left and my coffee spilled all over it. I was the first person to ever borrow this book. We had to buy it!

The irony doesn't end there. While on that shopping trip I bought some 8X10 frames. I wanted to give my family members a really nice photo of my mom and her sisters taken in Olgunquit, Maine in the 1950's for Christmas. I couldn't find the photographs ,but I knew I had just seen them. I had them done in India and had been holding on to them for months. I looked all over the house for days.I finally found them. When I came home from shopping I had put my organization book on top of them, and then put the frames on top of the book. That little sandwich really lit a fire in me.

Goodwill. Trash. Keep. I will hold everything I own up to this mantra. Surfaces. Clean empty surfaces.