feng shui

a glance at my desk drawer would quickly show you that i\’m not really, well, organized.  that\’s been the case since childhood; many of my worst grades came in the \”Keeps Desk Neat and Orderly\” category.  (well, that and penmanship, but even then i knew that keyboards were the way of the future.)  i\’ve really never been the type to take the extra couple of minutes to put something away in an orderly fashion– just throw x (where x can equal post-it notes, screwdrivers, or pants) near where it needs to go and worry about it later.  thus, i find clutter and chaos in multiple areas of my world.  to wit:

• basement.  ever since we moved, the rough side of the basement has been the target for anything big and bulky and otherwise homeless in our home.  which is somewhat appropriate (it has shelves just for such a purpose), but now i can\’t really move around in there without knocking over a box of books or christmas ornaments.
• file cabinet.  i don\’t really throw anything away.  time warner invoice from 2005?  got it.  slumberland receipt from 1998?  yup.  musicland receipt from 1989?  you bet.  (the latter is from my purchase of Living Colour\’s self-titled release.)
• iPod.  when it takes longer to navigate to the song than it does to play it, i need help.
• my desktop.  no.  really.

as a prototypical westerner, i don\’t place much value in the chinese belief system of feng shui.  i don\’t believe that different directions have different energies, nor do i believe placing objects in a room in relation to those directions have an impact on, well, anything.  however, i think one of the more practical guidelines of feng shui has a great amount of value:  avoid clutter.  it\’s amazing to me how much at-ease i am when i come in to a cleared desk in the morning.  or how much less i dread going to my garage after cleaning and organizing it a couple of weeks ago.  when something is messy, i spend a lot of mental energy thinking about how i should clean it, vs. the task at hand.  and, baby, that ain\’t no way to live.

so i started last night, with the file cabinet.  four shred-stuffed garbage bags later, i\’m down to a reasonable amount of old papers.  reasonable enough that i can actually organize them now, which seemed too daunting of a task previously.  and it felt…  really liberating.  shockingly so.

i\’m not going to become a neat freak; it\’s just not in my nature.  but i might try to actually stick to the rules that i give my daughter; namely, put something away when you\’re done with it.  it only took me 30 years to learn that.