Organize Your Mind

Somewhere along the way I heard or read that the state of your home reflects the state of your mind.  This is not a good sign!  My house is a total disaster right now, partially due to puppies cooped up for 4 straight days (it’s sunny today and they’re at grandpa’s running on 6 acres) and partially because my “office” is a disaster.

My mother decided to buy us a nice daybed for Christmas (yeah in August), which is totally a present for her, as she didn’t want to sleep on our futon when she came to visit (the futon was an offensive tactic to prevent guests overstaying their welcome).  So the futon got sold, the daybed arrived, and my office got turned all topsy turvy.  There’s a chair in there that I don’t have room for, there’s no matress yet, and nothing is where it ought to be.  Given Callie’s latest destructive phase, I want to turn my office back into its original function and move my computer to my desk.  The semester has started and with 3 sections of general psych, I need peace and quiet to grade and such.  But I haven’t been able to do ANYTHING because the rain has precluded us from taking the chairs to my mother’s and picking up the mattress (and new dishwasher–YAY!).  In honor of the sun, I’m taking off work 2 hours early to run up and get them.  Still can’t take the chairs, as DH has to work late, but I’m not willing to wait any longer.  I don’t know how much writing will get done today, as my main focus is on decluttering and organizing my work space, and thence, my mind.

I think it’s very important to have a neat and organized work space.  One where you know where stuff is and don’t have a mess to distract you from the task at hand (a little OCD much?).  I was always this way during finals in school, and I remain so as an adult.  I need a neat workspace to think.  Clutter and disorganization and mess makes too much “noise” and I can’t think about anything else.  So here’s to organizing your workspace.

Here’s the before: Okay I wound up in too much of a hurry to take before shots.  But here are the afters:

What you CAN’T see is the clear floor.   I now have room to actually use my ab roller and my weighted hula hoop (yes, I said hula hoop-according to the website it burns as many calories as running a 10 minute mile, which sounds ridiculous until you consider that running a 10 minute mile does not burn NEARLY as many calories as one would expect given the effort you have to put forth to do so–anyway, this totally whittles your waist, which I SO need right now).  And for anyone who cares that bedding you see up there looks like THIS on the website:

Does that look at all like the same color to you?  Doesn’t to me.  This is why I HATE ordering bedding online–the color is never the same.  However, no one actually SELLS daybed bedding in store.  Anyway.

I still need to rehang pictures and wall stuff, but that can wait for the weekend.  I have my personal space back and I’m thrilled.

This labor day weekend is intended to be a big clean out/catch up weekend.  The house is a disaster.  I’ve also got a bohemouth pile of mending to tend to that I’ve been putting off for literally months.  Time to get it done.  And best of all, well not for him but for me, hubby has to work a 12 hour on Saturday and he isn’t off on Monday (911 dispatch is NEVER off for holidays), so I have lots of uninterrupted time to get some things done!  Yippee!

4 thoughts on “Organize Your Mind

  1. Being a long-time slob, I can easily work on top of piles of junk and clutter and even ignore the occasionally unidentifiable funk (as long as I can get past the guilt of leaving it like that and writing instead of cleaning). When I go to my writing world, it is all just up there in my head. However, I can’t get to my world if people are talking to me. A lot of noises pull me right back out again.

    Remember “Somewhere in Time” and how Christopher Reeve had to get rid of every reminder of the present day in order to perform the sort of self-hypnosis that allowed him to travel back in time? And then at the end, just that one piece of solid evidence from our time sucked him right back to the present day.

    It’s like that.

  2. Yeah, sometimes if the house is too messy I can’t write. I need to know stuff is done first before I can fully immerse myself in the creative world.

  3. A clutter-free work space is essential to productivity, in my opinion.

    I’m glad you are finally able to get your office back in order. Sometimes when things pile up like that….this can’t get done, because I have to do that first and I can’t do that because…..we have to just take the bull by the horns and make it all happen or we will end up just adapting to living with the disorganization. The next thing you know it will become so out of control that it becomes utterly overwhelming.

    Good for you for not letting it get to that point.

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