Coming Clean

"Cleaning anything involves making something else dirty, but anything can get dirty without something else getting clean." Laurence J. Peter (1919 - 1988)

Oh, Niecy, divine Goddess of the Clean House, Patron Saint of the Perpetually Foolish, intercede for me now. Send your team of cleaning, organizing and design experts. Bring your yard sale angels to my aid. I am overwhelmed. I humbly admit that I am powerless over my clutter and that my tears have proved an ineffective cleaning fluid. Bring me your salvation. Give me a Clean House.

I watch "Clean House". (It's ALWAYS on, so this isn't as difficult as it sounds. I think they've actually launched a Clean House Channel. Or else it's just a House Channel, showing only episodes of "House" and "Clean House" and, very late at night, "Little House on the Prairie."

I watch "Clean House" in the hope that it will magically inspire me or grant me the sustained energy to magically do to my home what their trained team of experts and minions do, through the magic of television, in half an hour. It never happens. With the best of intentions I start what I like to think of as "the Great Project" and get about two hours into it when something distracts me or I have to stop for some reason and, yes, you guessed it, I somehow NEVER FINISH.

This is why I need a cleaning and organizing intervention. There should be a team that specifically works with brain injured folks and helps them reorder and retool their spaces and their lives so they are more efficient. If I wasn't in need of just such a service I'd probably have started that business by now. Alas, I can't do that until my office is clean, or at least until I can see the surface of my desk.

I've been alternating between my office space and my bedroom. Neither one is finished and, honestly, I've given up believing that either ever will be. The best I can hope for is "mostly done" or maybe "better than they are now". Yes, that would be an improvement. For instance, there is a treadmill in my office. I'd like to use it for exercise and not just as a flat surface for piling boxes of stuff and books.

Part of the problem is guilt. All this crap cost money and it's a shame to just throw it out. Books are especially difficult because I think you should be able to sell those. Too bad there are no used books stores locally. (Note to self: Local Book Exchange - another possible business opportunity?) Instead I'd have to schlep heavy boxes of books to either Havertown or New York or Kutztown or Allentown. Each of these booksellers has their preferences which means organizing and dividing the books before taking them to sell. And taking them to sell doesn't necessarily mean actually selling them. Book buyers are notoriously picky. Which in itself is a personal attack, each time they reject a book it is a commentary on you. It says, "YOU were stupid enough to buy this book but no one else would be."

There is always Amazon. In the past I've sold books through them. It's simple really, all you do is list the ISBN number on the website and it links to the book listing and then you log in your price and the books condition. You get an email when someone has purchased said book and then you ship it off and Amazon deposits the cash in your account. Brilliant, really. Except that I'm afraid to do it now, sure that I will forget to check my email or forget to mail the book or screw it up somehow and bungle the whole sale. I do have a pile of books that I want to list. Someday. It's been sitting there for well over a year.

There just has to be a better way to do things. All my doctors keep telling me to lower my stress level because it will help the cognitive symptoms. Lower stress = clearer thinking and better sleeping. But they've never seen the Wreck of the Hesperus that is my house. My friends haven't really seen it either. I'm one of those people who shoves things into closets and cellars when company is coming. Of course that just adds to the problem since stuff that was once in a place where I knew where it was, is now someplace else. Unfortunately, the part of my brain that still works fairly well is the visual. So I remember where things are by remembering what they were near or on or some such visual cue. When things are moved, especially if I didn't move them, I haven't a clue. This translates into hours and hours of searching for things I need as well as tons of redundancy. Many times it's just easier to go buy a new stapler than to search through the entire house to find the one I have. I have at least seven now. They are all, at the moment, missing.