This prompt hits quite close to home. There is no question that I have some clutter to deal with. The photo with this post is a shot of what I call “the bench”–the desk where I do electronics work–building circuits, repairing electronics, experimenting, learning–and it looks like this much of the time. Full disclosure: this is only one of the sub-spaces in my home where I pursue various interests, and all of them bear the marks of a packrat-type person who has too much stuff stored in spaces that are too small. The place where I make music, a desk very similar to the one in the photo, is also similarly cluttered, as is my garage wood shop, and as is the small corner that I have claimed as my amateur radio operating position, as are my bookshelves, and the closet where I keep the “overflow” stuff that I can’t find another place for.
It isn’t a hoarder situation, honestly. There are times when each of these spaces is tidy, with things in their proper places. Fine–I’m not certain I can prove that every one of these spaces has ever been in tidy form at the same moment. The process of tidying up one area sometimes requires that some of the untidiness be relocated to another area. I’m working on it.
The problem, I think, is that I apparently can’t be bothered to put a tool back where I found it when I’m finished with it. In the middle of a highly involved or intensely technical repair or assembly process, the mere act of replacing a tool to the storage location where it ostensibly belongs could be an interruption that sabotages the entire process. Or I suppose that the problem could also be that I sometimes get halfway into a project and then become distracted by other things that seem, in the moment, to hold higher priority, necessitating that I drop what I’m doing and switch to something else, and then never get back to cleaning up after myself.
There’s another problem, too, which is that once things are in disarray, the location of the specific tool or part that I have left lying where I last used it is now the last-remembered location of that tool or part, and after the mess has been there for long enough, tidying up makes it difficult for me to find things.
If all of that sounds like lame excuses for lazy, undisciplined behavior, bingo, you’ve sorted out my psyche.
Like I said, I’m working on it.
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(Posted in response to 1/16/2024 prompt)
doug heacock: words 