30 June 2016
Organisation
I want that perfect life!
by Lynda Goetz
I occasionally day dream that one day my life will be organised. I am not sure by whom though; after many decades, I have come to the sad conclusion that it is not going to be by me. Somehow, in spite of all my good intentions and best efforts, it just never seems to happen. When I used to write for magazines about people’s houses, I would look at the immaculately ordered homes and wonder why mine just never seemed to be in this organised state. I suppose, to be fair, that if you are having your home photographed for a magazine, you are going to ensure that the detritus of everyday living is safely stowed out of sight in the cupboard under the stairs, the attic, the airing cupboard or wherever, but somehow it always felt as if others managed to lead a more ordered existence than I ever have.
This of course extends not simply to the chaos of ‘stuff’ generated by everyday family life, but to the general administration needed to make life work. Oh, I do, of course, manage eventually to get this sorted, but I am quite convinced it takes me at least five times longer than it should because I do not deal with it efficiently. If I did, I would not, for example, spend half an hour looking for the bill that the window cleaner dropped off last time he came, or the bill from the builder’s merchant, or the invitation from the electricity company to choose a new tariff, all of which were on the kitchen table the last time I saw them. Nor would I have to go through the last year’s worth of emails (at last count there were 8473 unread!) to find the one relating to my daughter’s car insurance which I have a feeling needs renewing. At least the discovery some years ago of the ‘Search’ function in the mail box has made that task slightly less time consuming, although it doesn’t help much when I can’t remember which insurer I used for that particular car. Was it Aviva, Endsleigh, NFU or some other less well-known name? Typing ‘insurance’ into the search box brings up several hundred emails, including offers for house insurance, pet insurance, travel insurance or life insurance. This, by the way, is not because I am so technically unsavvy that I have failed to put a filter on my incoming mail, but simply because at some time I have searched for, communicated with, or even used these companies and have either failed to unsubscribe from their weekly efforts to interest me in their other products or, in spite of efforts to do so have not succeeded. I daren’t resort to deleting all emails relating to insurance, in case I unknowingly send into oblivion something of importance.
I do have two filing cabinets in the study. Admittedly it is sometimes hard to open them because of all the other stuff piled in front of them (mainly magazines I intend to read one day when my life is organised or boxes of photos which I will put into an album one of these years), but when I can, after a tidy up, manage to reach them, it does appear as if there is some sort of system in operation. There is but, unfortunately, any system is only as good as the operator. On days when the filing on the kitchen table needs removing (because we need more than three feet at one end to eat off, as family or friends are joining us) I add to or even create a new ‘Miscellaneous’ file. This is intended to be temporary. The contents will be redistributed to their correct files when I have the time. In the meantime they are at least off the kitchen table. I can put a huge and beautiful bunch of flowers from the garden in the centre (as well as some smaller ones which won’t need to be removed so that people can talk to one another) to draw everyone’s eyes away from the window sills which are not only adorned with plants, but odd items which do not seem to have a home: loose change in bowls; screws; paper clips and pen tops; not to mention the important letters which I did not want to lose in ‘the black hole’ that is the kitchen table – oh and dust!
I used to have someone who came weekly to help with the cleaning. This has not been possible for the last seven years as, for most of this time, I have been living in a permanent building site. That is not because I am creating something out of Grand Designs, but because my partner is a builder and does all the building in between his other jobs. (In the same timescale, one of our neighbours has had their farmhouse renovated; lived in that for four years; had an entirely new house built and moved into that two years ago. Needless to say it is immaculate. I wonder if they’d like it photographed for a magazine). I have also moved from a larger house to a smaller one, but failed to downsize my possessions at the same time. This, unsurprisingly, has resulted in the proverbial ‘quart into a pint pot’ syndrome. Numerous attempts to increase the storage space just means there are more out-of-sight places in which I need to look to find things I really do need. I am well aware that the ownership of too much stuff is something of a First World problem, but how come other people seem to be able to throw things cheerfully into a skip or dump them in a charity shop? Many of these now get so much decent stuff that they would probably turn their noses up at my squirreled possessions anyway. Why would you want to clutter up your beautifully re-designed shop with twenty ‘Beanies’ when these soft, coloured toy animals are a long out-of-date craze (my daughters’) and you could give room instead to a stunning pair of unworn shoes which someone purchased in a Cinderella moment and has never been able to cram her feet into?
Then there are the clothes, which any ‘de-clutterer’ would have had you throw out instantly on the grounds that they have not been worn for over three years. Well, what if multi-coloured floral patterns come back in? Ah, see, they just have! At least I have not really changed size in decades (we will ignore the slight thickening of the waist which does mean that some skirts and trousers are a little tight so not really wearable for now) and most of those old clothes do fit. What if I were one of those people who, as a result of yo-yo dieting, needed three different sizes of clothes depending on which stage of the cycle I was in? I do remember once going to a sale where a whole barn was devoted to selling the wardrobe of one lady, in sizes from 10 to 16. She must have needed several dressing rooms to organise those!
As I said earlier, though, I am not sure that having the space is necessarily synonymous with being organised. My ex-husband was convinced years ago that if we moved from a London home and cottage in the country to one larger house (yes, I know, another First World problem), then life would be simpler and better organised. In some ways it was, but a larger house meant more room to hoard stuff. There was the attic proper as well as the attic playroom (rarely used of course so ideal for storage). There were the spare bedrooms and extra cupboards. So where did I put that bag of outgrown kids clothing I was going to give to my sister when she visited? Perhaps the answer is simply to own less stuff, but we are constantly being encouraged as consumers to spend and purchase more, most of which is designed with as short a shelf life as possible so that we will go out and replace it.
Does the answer lie with technology? There is no doubt that my filing cabinet full of cardboard and paper is very 20th century, even Dickensian, but would I honestly be any better off if I had it all on my phone or tablet in the form of Apps? Looking at all the Apps I already have and don’t use, or do use but can’t access the right area when I want to, and all those photos on my phone which I do intend to edit and put into a photo book one of these days, not to mention all those files full of emails I should simply have deleted, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that organisation is one of those things you are either good at or you’re not. Clearly, if I really do want that perfectly organised life I should just enlist the help of someone for whom the word ‘admin’ does not invoke a mental groan and a mild feeling of panic. I could, and probably will, continue to infuriate those around me by my total inability to generate order out of chaos, unless, that is, I am asked if my kitchen could be photographed for a magazine. In that case, I will chuck all the duplicate cooking utensils; the gardening and building tools; the laundry basket of un-ironed clothes; the outstanding paperwork and the unread magazines into another room or the cupboard on the landing and sort it all out when I have time. In the meantime, I will look supremely unflustered and totally in control as I pour tea for the photographer.
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