Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog

I like to say that I never finished moving in four years ago. I suppose it’s more accurate to say that I never finished unpacking. It’s entirely true that I simply have too much crap.

Meet my kitchen table. I used to eat meals on it, back when it was in my former apartment. But ever since it moved into my condo, it has pretty much been in this state. I have yet to sit at it and eat a meal. There is plenty of room to put all that stuff elsewhere.

It just hasn’t seemed very important to liberate it. It is in a disadvantaged location. I informally envision that I would sit at the near end in this photo, which is out of eyeshot of my main television. If I sat at the other end, I’d be able to see my small, auxiliary TV. I have never though that I’d sit at the long side, because who wants to face a blank wall?

That I live alone also instills no sense of urgency about the project. I have a quite large desk that is in eyeshot of the big TV and that makes a very nice dinner table. Even the cats eat there (though that’s because my desk is the only stable, easy-to-get-to location for their food that is inaccessible to my mountain goat of a rabbit).

It becomes inconvenient when my parents visit, but we have gotten used to gathering at the coffee table in the front room for those group meals. On their last visit, though, my mom brought a little TV table because she had gotten tired of bending over to her plate on the low coffee table. (We were never plate-in-the-lap eaters.)

The kitchen table isn’t the only location that suffers from piles of stuff. Even the high-traffic front corner of my desk is always fighting off a stack. This one developed over the course of a 24-hour stretch when I thought I was going to get to some writing, which I do on my laptop. There was the envelope of related work materials, a catalog from our main client, a new book that I’m trying to get to reading, and the TV and stereo remotes and my iPhone, which always live on that corner. Then I grew the stack by adding nearby items, just for fun.

I have been trying to gear up to follow along with the Fly Lady, who gets you to declutter by tackling it 15 minutes at a time. Seems pretty reasonable, if I’d only actually do it. Maybe tomorrow. Probably not.