My room and my study are the same place; I spend more time there than I do in the other rooms of the house. As a result, that is where I put my stuff down when I don't want to put out the effort to put it where it belongs. Yes, that is a complicated way of saying 'I have a messy room'. Actually though, that's past tense now. I cleaned my room in late May of this year. Somehow, this has affected my brain.
Since I have cleaned my room, I have become more organized than my sister, the responsible one. This doesn't just refer to our living quarters. For example, I rearranged the movie bookshelf. My sister helped a little. I don't organize like most people. The following are some of the sections we now have.
Science Fiction/Joss Whedon
Old Cheesy Movies (Gremlins, Time Bandits, etc.)
Westerns/Action Movies
Shakespeare
Fairy Tales
Heroes (not the T.V. show. Different movies that have come from comic book heroes.)
Movies We Wish We Never Bought
Literature
I had a phone call so I had to leave my sister to finish putting the categories on the shelves. I was impressed when I returned to find that she had organized Historical Figures in chronological order of the figure. However, I do not think that our Inspirational Movie section should be arranged by time period. If they deal with the same issues I will put them together, otherwise time shouldn't really matter there. The categories are in no "logical" order, but it makes sense to me. It's very much like my bookshelves.
Back to the main topic. The point is, I've always been unorganized. When we were little, my sister and I used to joke about how the toys on the floor were booby traps. We always knew where to step and other people had to stay strictly to the path that snaked around our bed. What I want to know is how cleaning my room triggers a need to organize little things. Cleaning still holds that subtle dislike, but tidying is fine. There is a difference. Cleaning is the big stuff, the attic, the teenager's room, that huge pile of dishes on the counter. Tidying is the little stuff, putting the small pile of laundry on coat hangers in the closet, putting something left around back where it goes, reorganizing. Big stuff is made up of little stuff, but if I can still view the little stuff as building up to the big stuff I stress. I sort of flip out after doing a tiny amount.
"This is such a big thing!"
"Why must I do this today? Why not tomorrow? Why not the day after tomorrow?" (The call of procrastination, I know it well.)
"There might be a spider in there!"
"I can't do all this!"
"Can I do it later? I want to stay in this book for a few more days."
"I was perfectly fine before. I don't see why it's all that important."
"I think something moved! Was it a spider?!"
"Nap please? We like naps."
"EEeek! Spider!"
Somehow, even if I have all the time in the world, big stuff triggers something in my brain that puts me in panic mode. In sixth grade, I would cry from the overload of stress. I guess I just stress easily, but it's okay now. My mother used to stress a lot too. She still does, but she says it's not as often or bad as she used to. She was the one who taught me how to avoid stress. Maybe that's why my brain has decided to have a strong love of tidying. In order to protect me from a meltdown, it minimizes the likelihood of me encountering something that could cause a meltdown. Huh. How about that. Well, that or I'm just plain crazy ,which is just as, if not more, likely.
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