an excellent day for self-improvement
I woke up this morning and lounged around for a while, and before long I started to fall into a semi-panic about the growing mess that has been created in my apartment.
Between the bagsandbagsandbagsandboxes of stuff I have bought for my classroom, and the piles of new clothes and clean clothes and dirty clothes and to-be-dry-cleaned clothes, it's been getting increasingly more complicated for me (and my adventurous cat) to blaze a path through the mess(es). My panic started to rise from my solar plexus (the way it tends to do before it spurs me to action), so I decided, finally, to respond to the professional organizer from craigslist that I had contacted a few weeks ago. What the hell, I thought - soon enough I will be earning a decent salary, so I might as well start learning how to treat myself nicely.
As luck would have it, she was available this afternoon. Wouldn't you know it, just making the appointment inspired me to start straightening up whatever I could. Sorta like cleaning up before the housekeeper comes, I suppose.
In two and a half hours, we moved all of my classroom stuff into one pile near the door; rediscovered the surface of my desk; sorted my currently-useful books into categories and put them on shelves near but not on my desk; found countless small items I had feared lost in the chaos, including several things that don't belong to me; and perhaps most significantly for me, I went through one of my huge piles of Miscellaneous Personal Stuff and sorted it into manageable smaller piles. And somehow, without throwing very much away, I have tons more room on my shelves than I did this morning.
Despite E.'s disappointing lack of support for my choice to pay someone for helping me with all of this, I feel it was well worth the money. And I plan on having another session with her in the near future - we didn't even get to tackle the piles in my bedroom. But I feel like I did something really healthy and productive. I even went to the closest Lenscrafters to donate my old glasses just now - and bought myself a new outfit at the Gap on the way home. Now, of course, I am going to hang up my new clothes.
Between the bagsandbagsandbagsandboxes of stuff I have bought for my classroom, and the piles of new clothes and clean clothes and dirty clothes and to-be-dry-cleaned clothes, it's been getting increasingly more complicated for me (and my adventurous cat) to blaze a path through the mess(es). My panic started to rise from my solar plexus (the way it tends to do before it spurs me to action), so I decided, finally, to respond to the professional organizer from craigslist that I had contacted a few weeks ago. What the hell, I thought - soon enough I will be earning a decent salary, so I might as well start learning how to treat myself nicely.
As luck would have it, she was available this afternoon. Wouldn't you know it, just making the appointment inspired me to start straightening up whatever I could. Sorta like cleaning up before the housekeeper comes, I suppose.
In two and a half hours, we moved all of my classroom stuff into one pile near the door; rediscovered the surface of my desk; sorted my currently-useful books into categories and put them on shelves near but not on my desk; found countless small items I had feared lost in the chaos, including several things that don't belong to me; and perhaps most significantly for me, I went through one of my huge piles of Miscellaneous Personal Stuff and sorted it into manageable smaller piles. And somehow, without throwing very much away, I have tons more room on my shelves than I did this morning.
Despite E.'s disappointing lack of support for my choice to pay someone for helping me with all of this, I feel it was well worth the money. And I plan on having another session with her in the near future - we didn't even get to tackle the piles in my bedroom. But I feel like I did something really healthy and productive. I even went to the closest Lenscrafters to donate my old glasses just now - and bought myself a new outfit at the Gap on the way home. Now, of course, I am going to hang up my new clothes.