"Before" Pictures (CNP #1)

 Let me begin this blog entry by saying that I really do strive towards organization. I daydream about it. I regular dream about it. I crave it with every sinew in my body. Here is proof. This is something I taped to the inside of my bedroom door several months ago to remind myself of the tenets of people who have their $#@% together.

All five rules make fantastic and wonderful sense. I learned Rule 1 the hard way, by ignoring lots of important mail notifications. Then, of course, I lost money paying to fix the kind of mistakes you make when you ignore lots of important mail notifications.

I still need to enforce Rule 2, which to me is more important than the following three rules because my job has no place taking up residence in my house. My job needs to stay at my job. An adult should never have a pile of, say, thirty-some-odd three-dimensional geometry projects sitting in a reusable bag on the floor of her bedroom. It's stress-inducing. And unsightly.

Every time I take a pair of socks off and haphazardly toss them to the ground in front of my bed, it's like a giant "SCREW YOU" to Rule 3. At this point, my drawers don't shut, my closet stays open, and homeless garments (both clean and dirty) mingle together on the hardwood floor. This is the sort of state of exisitence you would expect from a college kid. If you are an adult and you have to do the "sniff test" before determining whether clothes have been laundered or worn, you're doing something wrong.

I guess if there's one thing I do really well most of the time it's Rule 4. The yoga mat usually only has a few things on it that I can simply sweep to the side. It's a bit like plowing a driveway, though. You can clear it well, but the snow has to go somewhere. Like the snow, stuff on the yoga mat often gets shoved unpoetically to the side and left there. Except my stuff doesn't melt and go away.

Rule 5 is a great way to assure that my bags don't become embarrassing for me to carry in public. You know how some gals will ask their friends, "Hey, could you just go into my bag and find... "? I will never, ever ask anyone to do that. If you peeked into one of my bag pockets, you'd understand. I'll leave it at that.

I'm sure you're dying to see the before pictures. I'm embarrassed to post them. But if I'm going to do this, you'll need to see a point of reference to understand the progress I'll have made by the end of the week. See below.

To the right, you'll see my room in all its glory. This is my natural habitat. You can see my green yoga mat in the lower middle of the photo. Looks as if the mayhem is creeping and seeping into the yoga mat's personal space

Below that, you'll see my blatant disregard for Rule 1 (the one about taking care of my mail when I receive it).

If these pictures made your jaw drop, well... that's just the way it is right now. I wish I could say this were a joke and I just pilfered these pictures from the interwebs to be funny. But saying so would make me a horrible liar.

Tell me, could you concentrate in this physical space? Well, could you? I certainly can't. If I want to do anything worthwhile this summer, I'd like to first take care of my environment. It will be so much easier for my brain to relax once that's under control and has a system in place.

Right now, I'm going to eat some soy ice cream and blueberries to cool off. Then I'll do some yoga next to my window fan. Then, I'll make a list of stuff to clean and just dive in.

Good luck to me. And to you, if this has inspired you to also tidy up somewhere.