When I really want to clean something up I have to move quickly. It’s a race against boredom, a race against thinking too much, against all that training I did with my brain— practicing the piano, counting, clapping and breathing, playing imaginary games of College Bowl, outlining courses and terms, writing Moot Court briefs and questions, and remembering alternative spellings for Scrabble. Thoroughness? Completion? Not worth it. No I’d have to start from the beginning to do it THE RIGHT WAY. But this little crap isn’t worth my time and skills. Just do it.
It’s entirely possible that I would clean-out every stray button, every interesting ribbon, every heart-tugging note, card and photo, not to mention the shirts that wouldn’t be bad under a sweater (note to self: I don’t wear sweaters. But my Auntie gave me this one, when she was so sick it wrings tears from my heart….) It’s entirely possible I would get them all laid out in carefully delineated piles on the floor, table, chairs, and dedicated vessels and then loose my head of steam, my ability to care, to finish. THEN WHAT? I’d have a much bigger mess than I did originally and no interest in it.
Better to put the strays in purgatory. I’ll just label a box “small strays” and put all that little shit in there. Remember, these are the things I couldn’t find places for in that explosion of energy, vigor, reform, lust for the unadorned surface of my desk, table, chair, floor or passenger seat. Alligator clips don’t go in this box—they have a perfectly good spot in the alligator-clip box in my desk drawer. This strays box is a halfway-house to the garbage can, a next-door neighbor in fact.
You might recognize this technique if you’ve ever won a game or two of Go Away with your in box. The steaming pile hits your in box. You’re not quite sure how to proceed. There can be many reasons for this—lack of confidence, outright ignorance, unwillingness to ask that asshole over there about his interest in this issue. You’d like to get rid of the stink but you really don’t want to get it all over your hands, no do you? So you let it sit and dry out.
Maybe it will just go away of its own accord; some of these stinkers do. The problem just clears itself up—then you can drop the dried turd into the wastebasket and feel so much lighter. So goes the business card I saved from the woman who I suspect is actually sort of a bitch. I know I’d never contact her, but she’s a friend of a friend of mine and the card is well-designed. THAT card will finally just drop into the garbage for once and for all. That will feel so very liberating that the next two-thirds of the box will just follow the bitch-card into oblivion. The crumbs? The one-third that didn’t quite make it out this time? These are the prime candidates for first-out next time. But make sure they get out within the year, or they start to accumulate sentimentality points.
A clean surface—and, by gum, it’s a contagious affair. That slick piece of wood—ok, fibreboard—feels so good I take on the next surface and the next. All at this break-neck speed (it’s best to have a time by which I must leave the house.) Quick!
When I come back, I enter an entirely new province. The studio, the bedroom reveals the mind of an orderly, crap-free person. Is this the new me? Can I maintain this spare luxury for a week at least? Maybe it’ll spread across remaining shit-piled surfaces. I wonder what would happen if I took a picture of the clean and made it my screen-saver?
And when it hits the tidiest it’s ever likely to get—because these are relative terms and my relatives have had a lot of input—it’s time to take on my mind. Quick make a list of old thoughts to throw away. Purge, purge, purge—scrub the surface flat and free of dust. Sigh away the stinkers and the old dry turds and snap a picture of the cherry blossoms everywhere for the screen-saver of my mind.