I Have Piles

Not those piles! I would hardly announce that I had hemorrhoids on my blog. If I ever feel that comfortable, I’m hoping people would leave a few “Ewww! Gross! TMI!” comments to shake me back into reality.

And the reality is that I have these piles:

Exhibit A – books and more books (and even more books) that seem to multiply no matter how many times I clear out my bedroom bookcase.

If you look very closely, you’ll see that I have Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, because I really am that literate and erudite. Lest I start feeling too intellectual, you are free to point out that it is wedged in there next to Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons.

Exhibit B – last summer’s clothing, casually flung over my chair.

In a fit of organizational pique, I recently decided my closet could use more space, especially since half the stuff in there was a little too roomy for me. I took out everything I couldn’t use. I put the clothes aside. I started to research local churches where I could donate them. And then…my schedule got hectic, I failed to call a single church, and I never use that chair, so it became easy to ignore it.

It wasn’t until the jewelry situation – one billion interconnected necklaces snaking over my dresser like vines – that I felt like my bedroom was less a retreat and more an indoor garage sale.

I’ve gone to the Container Store and bought bill organizers, toilet tank caddies and hanging shoe cubbies. But my bedroom remains the great wilderness in my apartment, the last refuge of the dreaded piles.

I finally decided to take the piles by the horns (yes, in my mind they have horns), and do what I do best: make a list!

I come from a family of list-makers. My mother insists on them whenever there’s a chance that her memory may fail. (Which doesn’t happen.) My father started his packing list before I was born, updated it when I joined the family, and has adapted it for every stage of life. Let’s just say it’s a diapers-to-dentures list, very comprehensive. If he knew we would need something while we were on the road, it would be on the list.

In college, I used a detailed list to plan my study schedule just so:

12:00 to 12:30 – Review chapter 1
12:30 to 12:35 – Write chapter summary
12:35 to 12:45 – Answer chapter questions
12:45 to 12:50 – Drink water and take a pee break
12:50 to 2:30 – Draft opening paragraph of essay
2:30 to 3:00 – Review chapter 2
2:30 to 2:35 – Eat a peanut butter sandwich

Obviously, I couldn’t live up to the list. (For some reason, my body didn’t understand that I was only allowed to drink and pee at scheduled intervals.) I just needed to know that in a perfect world, I could accomplish everything – and in handy five-minute increments, no less.

I sat down last night, cracked my knuckles, and typed on my laptop: WHAT I WANT TO DO THIS WEEKEND.

I proceeded to list 13 organizational and cleaning activities I need to do to get my apartment in tip-top shape. I started to realize I wouldn’t get all of them done in one weekend, so I highlighted the text at the top and typed: WHAT I WANT TO DO THIS AND NEXT WEEKEND.

I thought that summed it up, and gave me two whole weekends to do it all, to boot. I paused, reflected, and added nine more things I wanted to tackle, from polishing my jewelry to spot-cleaning my kitchen floor and dusting every stick of wood in my apartment. I was satisfied that I had covered the organizational gamut, and that at the end of the 22 items, my home would look like a clean, well-decorated youth hostel. (It’s too downscale to imagine as a hotel.)

I saved the document, happy with my effort – and looking forward to my impending productivity– and closed out.

A few minutes later, I felt a tiny doubt surfacing. I reopened the document and highlighted the text at the top. I typed:

SPRING CLEANING I EVENTUALLY WANT TO DO

Seriously, what's so bad about some harmless piles? I'll get to them...sooner or later.