The laundry closet has become an obelisk of junk. A shrine to a plastic wrapped, batteries not included, gotta have that gadget, throw-away society of consumerism.   But for now, I am closing the doors to pretend that it doesn’t exist. I have bigger bugs to blast.

 

I have discovered the queen clutter bug nest. The nerve center of the clutter bug infestation, to be sure. Drum roll, please…….. my office.   Why do I have my college textbooks from the mid 1980’s?   Who is going to read even one page of the seven volumes of the entire Internal Revenue Code and Regulations from 1998? Will letter size Pendaflex folders ever fit into a legal size file cabinet? The list goes on and on.

 

Since selling my business earlier this year, I have been inspired to rethink the use of the functional space in my home.  My office occupies almost 300 square feet of prime real estate, but I have longed for a dedicated school room and library for some time now. I can just see it in my mind’s eye. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a desk with a hutch for each child and a cozy reading nook surrounded by books? Originally, John and I considered adding onto the house for just this reason. But when we prayed about it, God never gave us peace about the decision, so we just kept delaying and finally decided against it. Now, however, John and I both feel very peaceful about the decision to downsize the office and take over the space for our homeschool. 

 

To understand just how the queen clutter bug operates, picture, if you will, cupboards of ancient office supplies, filing cabinets of important stuff (at least it was when I put it in there), bookcases of old software, textbooks, and reference books, a big drawer of electronic cables, cords and old phone chargers, a collection of pens that don’t write, a broken typewriter, and the first scanner ever made. I have to admit that there was a time that I wanted to call in the demolition experts (the ones with the big ball and the explosives) to knock the house down and start over. My husband had gone out of town for the night and I thanked God that he didn’t see the house at the peak of the battle. Once I had found a small nook for my new office upstairs, I couldn’t just move in. I had to rid the nook of all the science and art supplies that it had been housing. And then I had to carefully select only what I absolutely needed to go to my new downsized office. Then I had to figure out how to get rid of the rest. 

 

If you’ve read my earlier clutter bug adventures, you know that I work with an extra-large trash can and lots of boxes for items to sell or give away, but for this job, that wasn’t enough. As I sorted, the piles of junk got larger and began to give me clutter bug anxiety. I got so I couldn’t stand the piles of junk even though I’d already been boxing or bagging them. My solution: I backed the pickup truck up to the door and loaded it for a dump run and filled the van with all the give away stuff. The mere thought of having a garage sale filled me with dread, so I decided to quickly load and leave, so I couldn’t change my mind. God bless the sweet people at the Goodwill office who were so kind to let me leave it all there. I can’t imagine a more daunting job than sorting through someone else’s junk. And God bless the sweet lady at the landfill that let me take the Internal Revenue Code to its final resting place, where it should be. Dust to dust.

 

© Sallie H, 2007. All rights reserved.

 

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