Clearing Out

The new rule in our two-bedroom apartment is that if you bring stuff in, you must remove an equal amount of stuff. Our apartment has a ton of closet space, which we immediately filled up with boxes randomly tossed together with all the bits and pieces that comes from moving rapidly from one coast to the other and then jumping straight into work and finishing a grad program. Through the years we've cleared out the boxes that AK simply tipped his office drawers into and recently I cleared out all my old notebooks and crap from Vassar. But slowly the entropy builds and the floor of the office becomes obscured by papers, fencing equipment, and the detritus of life. And yes, I am panicking about the Great Sibling Visitation 2009 and how my apartment will appear for the first visitors from my family. I come from a family that deep cleans twice a year, vacuums every day, and cleans out closets and cars as a pleasant Sunday activity. My years with an art major who is naturally messy has tempered this impulse (though I think it's telling that I'm seriously considering cataloging and organizing information as a profession).

Today AK and I worked on clearing out our respective office space (mine is a corner of the bedroom and his is the guest room). We recycled more paper than I thought imaginable. We're both such pack rats when it comes to documents. I can't bear to let go of photocopied readings and he has probably two dozen partially filled notebooks, each with scraps of story ideas or fencing progressions. Now the office closet looks like a storage space instead of a pit and I can find my notes from the quarter (key for revising and doing finals). There's something so soothing about cleared space, neatly stacked boxes and alphabetized items. Tidy room, tidy mind?

But maybe this entry is just more procrastination/distraction from the end of the quarter. Only two more projects to go, both of which are well-under control. I think.