Clutter

The first year that Godot and I lived here, we had plenty of space and no clutter. When Karma joined us a year later, we still had plenty of space and no clutter. The same holds true when we welcomed Rebel into our family, followed by Mark Twain. But somewhere along the line, clutter took over. I am not referring to the pet toys on the floor. Nor am I talking about all the knickknacks that I have received as gifts over the years. Those are neatly placed on my bookshelves. (Perhaps if a personal property tax were imposed on knickknacks, I might be inclined to part with some of my dust collectors--the problem is that I have sentimental value attached to all of them.) I am chuckling as I write this: whenever I tell anyone who has never been to my home that my house is cluttered, I am exaggerating, but I think they have an image of a hoarder, with junk and garbage all over the place. That is not the case at all. Paper clutter is the real topic of this post. You see, I used to be an organized perfectionist. Not anymore, due to the never ending paper stuff that gets delivered via the postal service and, more importantly, a lack of file cabinets. Nevertheless, I do have a system: bills that need to get paid are promptly placed on my desk. But one bill I did not recognize got away from me, so to speak, since I tossed it on the table one day--the day I decided I would organize all my papers, once and for all, and get a head start on next year's taxes. As if that was going to happen in one day's time! However, I did make a good attempt before I got overwhelmed, at which point I left everything neatly stacked until the next day. Then, I discovered that some feline family members had decided to surprise me with their secretarial assistance during the night. And so ended my short-lived determination to get my papers organized. Therefore, my apologies go out to a lab in California for late payment of their bill, which I recently discovered along with the missing health insurance explanation of benefits pertaining to their charges, something I had not recalled receiving. Those papers were right next to my missing holiday greeting cards, under a stack of junk mail. Of course. Thanks go to my feline secretaries. That's right, blame it on the poor cats, who were merely trying to be helpful. The truth is, I have a real abhorrence of organizing papers. Especially since I am short in the file cabinet department. Of course, I know how to get organized--I just don't feel like doing it. It seems like the biggest waste of time and energy. Besides, it is just so much more fun to ransack the house looking for a piece of paper.