Sunday Blues

Well, it's verrry late Sunday night and I am somewhat sad about having to go back to work tomorrow. What can I say? It's been a great, laid-back week and I did next to nothing.

Naturally, it's after midnight, and my desire to work has just picked up. Not so much for school, mind you, but to clean my apartment and try to organize so I can have my taxes done. Oh well, it's too bad I can't have this kind of motivation during the day, but I am hoping to take things in baby steps.

In the last few months, I have had not one, but two good friends call me up and exclaim, "I've got it! I know what your problem is! You're a hoarder!" Well, knowing that they were both well-meaning, and that they were both most likely right, I am attempting to cure myself.

In that attempt, I have researched my disease a little. If you click "visitors sent in" numbers 7, 26, 39, 41, 45, 55 all seem to apply to me. However, that was the first part that I really paid attention to. After exploring further, I actually am not a hoarder: I am able and (usually) willing to take out the trash. I do notbelieve that each and every thing has an intrinsic value and cannot, therefore, be thrown out. I DO believe that a good deal of my problem was inherited. Here is my mother in our kitchen:

In other attempts to figure out what to do, I focused on what one of the people who wrote in to the above site said: that although her mom was a hoarder, she has used routines to help control her temptations. So, I have found a site called Flylady.com and joined it. She focuses on small steps and routines to help make your home livable again. I have not actually started where she wants me to start, namely because as a teacher and a student, with taxes needing to be filed soon on both my and mom's estates, I felt it was most prudent to begin with my desk.

I have taken a chunk of my inheritance and paid off 2 of my 5 credit cards and will write the checks for the other ones tomorrow evening. That way I will know I will never need a past statement again and when I organize my papers, looking for tax info, etc, I can shred all of the ones that I'd saved because I'd felt guilty I couldn't pay them.

Next, I got onto freecycle.org and posted the extraneous equipement I have now due to my upgrades. I got several responses for my old fax machine, computer monitor and freebie printer. I am now just waiting to make appointments with the "winners" to come and collect their loot.

Yay, me! I really feel like I am on my way to having a much healthier existence!