TOO TIDY?

I WILL NEVER, ever be accused of being too tidy. Wherever I am, the area immediately around me becomes littered with "stuff". I can tell, in fifteen minutes, when I've arrived in a motel room. It just happens, even when I'm attempting to be neat, a quality that doesn't seem to be in my genes, although my sibling with the same mother and father lives a nearly monastic existence in his spare surroundings.

I realize that one of the things that leads to such untidiness is having too many things in my life. In all honesty I have to plead guilty to being a gatherer par excellence. With all the recent television exposure about people who hoard, I fear that I may be a borderline hoarder, but I hope it's not that bad. Over the years I think I've read every book written on the subject of de-cluttering and organizing. The time spent reading them was for naught.

This morning I ran across this which gave rise to the subject for this post.

I digress only slightly when I go back to the days before we made the big move to the Manor. I interviewed four recommended candidates to carry out an estate sale for our accumulated belongings. They all had seemingly good qualities and explained how they would proceed with the undertaking. I was assured that everything would disappear, right up to the last potted plant and the final trash can. Or at least I thought that was what I heard. Out of the four, I selected the one who had run a retail store in the area for 25 years. In fact, several of our pieces of furniture had come from her antique shop. No matter that the percentage of sales that she'd acquire was 10% higher than the other candidates quoted. I went to bat for choosing her to be the one we'd work with.

Wrong! Without going into the details, when all was said and done, we were left with a worse mess than when it all began. Once we'd emptied the full attic, a stuffed garage, and a house full of 46 years worth of "treasures"; once the sales were over, once the seller and her motley crew walked off the job, this is what we were left with. The shot is from the attic window.

Be still, my cluttered heart.................

And that was just a portion of the patio you're seeing. The rest was equally shocking. The clean-up was left to two tired seniors trying to simplify their lives.

Tim to the rescue..........

This
is a
sim-
pli
fi-
ca-
tion
 of the effort it took to finish the job we thought we had hired someone for. Tim did a magnificent job.

The sad part is that I was just sure that I'd be a new person when I moved into the Manor. I'm smart enough to know that "No matter where you go, there you are!" but I thought I could overcome that and change my ways. Alas, not so. There seems to be no end to these battle of the bulges. Closets, storage spaces, surfaces, the body, all too much of a muchness. Soldier on......................

"Everything we possess that is not necessary for life or happiness becomes a burden, and scarcely a day passes that we do not add to it."  
                                              ~Robert Brault