The drawbacks of spring cleaning

I have always been a subscriber to the "everything has its pile, and every pile has its place" method of organization. Whenever I try to get a little more organized than that, for instance alphabetizing things, neatening and labeling and such craziness as that, I invariable cause trouble for myself.

Nothing ensures my inability to find something at a later date MORE than actually putting it away.

That said, I finally, after several years of living in "the attic", decided to organize the room a bit, and maybe actually, you know , find the floor and such. The running theory is that if I finally fully "move in" I will suddenly have the opportunity to "move out", Murphy being my guiding deity and all. Now would probably be a good time to clarify what I mean by living in the attic. Technically this room is not the attic, but it is just below the roof, has a loft, and is the direct access to the attic.

In those periods of my life when I was not occupying this space, it became the stopping spot for all things that my parents deemed in need of keeping (primarily because they keep EVERYTHING), but did not really want to actually expend the effort of hauling onto the loft and into the attic. After time, the attic door became a myth, and the room became rather inundated with … THINGS. Fortunately there was still access to the bed, so when I once again found myself in need of hiding … er … um … lodging … I had a place to sleep.

Since my recent "temporary" residence has redefined temporary, I have gradually been sifting through things and tossing what was not really necessary. Verrrrry gradually. Invariably ending up with me wondering "Where the hell is {insert needed item here}?!" at some point. Most recently, I decided to actually clean up my desk, the associated file cabinet, and the abundance of WHAT NOT beneath it.

Under the desk was all sorts of useful items. Like every graduate school application I filled out twenty years ago when I was under the delusion I would actually continue my schooling. Apparently I inherited the hoarding gene too.

Several hours, a rather full hefty bag, and enough dust to put any self-respecting volcano to shame later, I wiped the sweat off my brow and wondered if I had actually achieved anything. The floor around and under my desk was now visible (and rather scary looking) so I chalked that off as a positive.

But then the horror set in.

As I was settling down to watch a well deserved movie on my computer, I stretched out my legs to get comfortable, and realized … my foot rest was gone!!! The vast dust collecting pile of useless WHAT NOT actually HAD served a purpose! Now how am I gonna get comfy?

Cleaning really is overrated!!