Maintaining my focus...

I was glad to see Kathy, the visiting occupational therapist, on Friday. I wanted to show her my again-chaotic kitchen, despite my continuing efforts at cleaning. "Is something wrong with my brain?" I asked her.  She said that she felt I was just overwhelmed by the continuing overabundance of stuff. She recommended a more drastic cull. Elaine, having read my last post, said much the same thing.

Kathy could see good progress, but she could understand my concern that Elaine would feel that I was backsliding. The counters were again covered as I worked to fit everything into the cabinets.

Since Elaine's last visit, I had been trying to work my way through the bins of food and nonfood items that we had collected from the counters, sinks and floor when we first started the kitchen cleanup. To put the counter stuff away in cabinets, however, has meant having to cull through excess items INSIDE the cabinets, so that there would be room for everything. In integrating the counter stuff into the cabinets, I realized that I had recreated the chaos of before.

I had, however, taken several carloads of things away and filled several city bins for recycling, landfill and composting.

I was feeling depressed about it, fully realizing the scale of my problem again. Neither Kathy nor Elaine were surprised, however. Both told me they felt that it was the sheer quantity of excess stuff that was proving a barrier to my success. Both women urged me to pare down even more dramatically.

I'm not sure that I am ready to be a minimalist. I still have visions of having large gatherings of family or friends for dinners -- as I did in the past, before my resident family downsized from three to one.  My mother, a product of the Depression followed by a comfortable middle-class lifestyle, had a well-stocked kitchen, and I have followed her lead in stocking mine well, too.

I have warned Kathy and Elaine that I may need to downsize in stages. I don't think I can do it in one fell swoop. Meanwhile, I have been working hard to take away what excess stuff I can part with -- while not bringing in new items.

More work on the kitchen with Elaine...

Elaine came over to help in the kitchen again for about three hours. She helped me empty out another pile of expired soup and juice cartons and otherwise clear the sink. Together, we freed up some other areas.

Her instinct was to put more bins of stuff on the balcony again, to free up more space for sorting in the kitchen. I resisted, however. I had to wash everything that sat on the balcony for several days a week ago. Most had collected dust and dirt. Some items were ruined by moisture. I am still struggling to finish some of the items -- hardware that will eventually go to the basement.

The table, however, is now partially clear to use as a sorting area. I am sorting hardware and office items there, bringing them in from the dining room and living room as I find them.

The struggle and the fine balance...

Of course, I realize that Elaine's instincts to push me to do more NOW are probably completely right and necessary, but sometimes I need to slow down the pace of change to deal with the anxiety that change causes in me.

This doesn't mean that I don't appreciate Elaine's suggestions or her generous offer of help. And I may later decide to do EXACTLY as she and Kathy have suggested. However, sometimes I just need time to adjust to the change. Luckily, Elaine will be away all this week, so I will be continuing to work on this on my own for a while. I  can try to solve the challenges I face in my own way -- and have time to think about her suggestions. Can I truly do with much less stuff?

Why do I have so much hardware, tools and manuals?

Just as my mother influenced my kitchen-stocking habits, my do-it-yourself dad influenced my hardware and tool habits and thinking patterns. He was an electrical supervisor with a degree in Industrial Education. He had grown up on a farm and had learned, by necessity, to fix just about anything. But fixing things became a passion for my dad. To support his passion, he purchased SEVERAL of every possible kind of tool and manual required to do anything he wanted to do.

I have never approached his expertise with tools, but I did inherit his mindset. I have always enjoyed reading manuals and how-to books, even if I ended up hiring a professional to do the job. At least I would know about the possible challenges or problems the professional might encounter. (As a technical writer, I have written a number of "how-to" books, mostly about software manuals.)

One of my dad's most endearing traits was his determination to be absolutely fair in his gifts to my brother and me. That meant that we both got identical tool sets, lamps, vacuum cleaners, knives, tv sets, and so on as Christmas gifts. He gifted us equally. (As a younger brother, my dad felt that his father had shown preference to his older brother in purchasing clothes and shoes. He was determined not to make that mistake with the two of us.)

Daddy also encouraged both of us to take all the science and math courses we could in school -- and made sure that we had science kits and books. He had wanted to become an engineer, but he had stumbled over Differential Equations. Because he felt that I could master the higher math, he encouraged me to study engineering. When I studied English and Journalism instead, he was disappointed.

However, Daddy would have liked it that I later became a technical writer. Like my dad, I have always been passionate about technology, so the shift to technical writing was not unusual. In my late 50s, I picked up a diploma in Information Technology. If my dad had been born a few decades later, he, too, would have become a computer geek. Unfortunately, by the time that personal computers had begun to take over modern life, my dad had developed Alzheimer's.

Daddy himself wasn't a very patient teacher -- in fact, he could become quite irritated with the two of us when he coerced into helping him with one project or another. It wasn't that we weren't smart -- he was just a perfectionist. My brother and I both regret that we didn't absorb more of our dad's mechanical and electrical skills over the years. We could have found great use for those skills.

Like my father, I often purchase multiples of certain tools, partly to be prepared, and partly because I forget where a particular tool is when I need it. I am also a compulsive buyer of how-to manuals. Whether because of distraction or attention deficit, I am very absent minded and constantly lose things -- just like my dad. This isn't just an age thing. I constantly lost or misplaced things throughout my teen years.

After Elaine left this afternoon, I managed to spend several hours sorting through some of the hardware bits and pieces. I am thankful that there is now room on the kitchen table for sorting items.

Semi-scrambled computer parts

Earlier this afternoon, I managed to empty out some space in the kitchen hallway that had been used for storing kitchen items. Now I am temporarily using the space to store about a dozen containers of computer parts, on their way from my living room to eventual storage in the basement. (I had been using the open space in the middle of the living room in recent months to sort the computer parts. Again, I have way too many. I need to inventory what is there, though, before I can decide what stays and what is sent for recycling.)

I have already sorted most of these by type, but some of them have become scrambled by interruptions in my routine. Music books, office supplies, and papers have been scrambled in. Also -- alas! -- I discovered several more bins of computer parts in the basement last week. Luckily, those parts are mostly older cables and hardware that I probably should recycle. Earlier today, I dropped a dead scanner and ink cartridge off at a recycling depot.