Spring Cleaning

Have you ever done spring cleaning? It's not something I grew up with, but every once in a while I just have to give up, shovel out my office, organize what I'm keeping and throw away everything else.

I'm in the middle of that now. We've moved all my office stuff out of the family room into the front room these last 2 days, and now I've got boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff to sort through. When I look at those boxes, I figure it will take months for me to get them all cleaned out. It's such a depressing thought, I can't cope, and I give up.

Happily, the way my desk is currently set up, I actually sit with my back to all those boxes (which are stacked halfway to the ceiling in the corner of the room). So I don't have to look at them, in the normal scheme of things. That helps me keep my mind on an even keel.

What I'm planning to do is pull one box over at a time to the side of my desk and clean out that one box. Then I'll take a break and write a scene or fill the dishwasher before I pull out the next box. And when my shredder gets full, then I'm done cleaning out boxes for the day.

It's not the kind of spring cleaning my grandmother used to do, and I'm not doing it in the spring, but it's a deeper cleaning than I usually do. Why do you think I have so many boxes to sort through? Because my usual way of 'cleaning' is to shove things I don't want to deal with into a box, to be dealt with later. Can't do that with bills, of course, but most everything else gets shoved.

Right up until times like now, when I'm tired of them trying to shove back. And frankly, when my office space is a mess, it also seems to clutter my mind, preventing me from writing. Or getting much of anything done. I really should clean more often, to keep my mind organized and my imagination purring.