Fragile Industries

More Fun With The Collyer Brothers, With Mixed Metaphors

I seem to have hit a popular nerve.

From time to time, I've posted about my clutter tendencies, also known as My War On Stuff.  This war is Iraq and Vietnam combined, in terms of the chances for outright victory.  The only longer and more fruitless war in human history is the aptly-named Hundred Years War between France and England of the 14th through 15th Centuries, though the War On Stuff is beginning to take on those dimensions.  The War on Stuff is best summed up in the words of Animal House:

"Now we could do it with conventional weapons that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part."  "And we're just the guys to do it!"

End of War metaphor, beginning of Dog metaphor.

Most recently, I discussed the salutary effects on my moribund organizational skills of playing a computer game.  It's of a genre I've since discovered is called "Time Management" games.  I knew I was lousy at that too, but who knew the inabilities were related?  Anyway, the Pavlovian exercises have marginally retrained my mental dog.  I don't yet salivate over the prospect of creating order out of chaos, but I'm at least less paralyzed. 

I've noticed that these Collyer Brothers clutter posts get about a bazillion hits a day.  And comments, frequently anonymous, are left.

A Devoted Yet Anonymous Reader left this comment.   If you're too lazy to click, basically, she asks for advice for dealing with clutter while pregnant and exhausted.  My advice.

.... long pause for hysterical laughter ....

But here goes:

Poor J, I completely feel your pain.  Except I am not now and never have been pregnant.  I can only imagine adding a hormonal component to the apathy, though that's not the right word, nor is ennui, but mix those up and add a dash of frustration and a heaping cup of anxiety, and it's close. 

Your request for advice is endearing and ironic.  The idea of me leading seminars on An Organized Life, well, it's enough to make a cat laugh.  I can tell you what has worked for me so far. 

The key here is you are not fighting clutter, you're fighting your brain.  And you have to re-wire your brain, like retraining a mistreated dog.  You do this by misdirection, distraction, rewards.  You re-frame the entire concept of cleaning and organization into a game, if you even let yourself know you're doing it at all.  Lull that whimpering dog into a false sense of contentment.

First, really, give a Time Management computer game a try.  Seems counterintuitive, I know, if you had time or energy, you'd organize, not play some stupid game, right?  But you're asking a frightened, beaten dog to be Lassie and pull Timmy from the well.  Let the dog go play with a tennis ball for a while (yes, I'll keep using this metaphor beyond the point of reason) and smell some fire hydrants before you ask it to be a hero.

Then set up a trial run.  But don't let yourself know it.

I think your idea of having friends come and distract you is excellent.  Doing it alone is part of the Giant Stumbling Block, in my experience, because there's no escaping the fact that you are confronting what scares you, alone and unarmed.  If no one is available, I've found that if I put on a favorite CD, one both soothing and energizing, and promise myself I can quit when the music does, I have a little more motivation. Do you do creative work to music?  Pick the same music for your clutter soundtrack.

Then decide on an infitessimally small part of the overall tower of STUFF for your first trick.  Do not listen to the voice in your head that says, "Holy crap, Batman, look at ALL this mess!  It'll NEVER get done!"  That way lies madness and death.  Tell that voice, "Never mind, at least the books scattered throughout the living room (or whatever you decide to do) are going to be gathered in one place."  Don't be ambitious, pick the tiniest, most manageable job you can think of, a laughably easy task -- you're almost ashamed to call it organizing at all.   And it should not involve decisions, at this stage.  The decision is already made: all books are going in a pile.  (Oh, and don't let yourself believe that the book could stay there as decor. You can decorate later.  ALL BOOKS go in a pile.)  If a friend is over, don't even tell them this is part of the organizing.  Just roam around as you chat and you won't even notice you're doing it.

Before I start the tiny task, I mentally do three related things.  First, I consciously tell my perfectionism to take a hike.  That's another huge part of The Stumbling Block.  Tell yourself ANYTHING you do, any movement of object A to point B, is cause for celebration.  It doesn't have to be done perfectly, a half-assed effort has more ass than nothing at all.

Secondly, I tell myself that it may look worse before it looks better.  But there will be one thing, that tiny task, I can look at that shows progress.  Which brings me to the last.  

Finally, I put on blinders and tell myself that the only thing I'm dealing with now is _________ (fill in the blank for the small segment you've selected of the overall task).   I just sail through it on auto-pilot singing along with the CD, pretending this one thing is the only disorder in the house, the universe. If I find my tension level rising, I ask myself if I'm trying to exceed the task, make more decisions -- and almost always, that's the problem.   When all those scattered books are now stacked next to the bookshelf (or whatever), STOP.  And go eat a Mars bar, have a bubble bath, throw your dog brain a biscuit, thinking about that nice pile of books.  If your friend is understanding, you may now shyly announce your victory.

Tomorrow, you'll not be so afraid.  Put on that pleasant CD again, and put the books in the shelves.  Wherever there's room, don't try to overhaul your shelves now.  On the shelf is better than on the floor.  If you're feeling Very Brave, have a box for give aways.  Make as many decisions ahead of time as you can -- say, all paperbacks you've already read are going in the box.  That way you're not standing there with a book in your hand reduced to tears by having to make decisions as you go.  That just adds to the negative dog brain.  Have a default decision -- if you hit the least bit of mental resistance, put the book on the shelf, for example, you can sort shelves later.  Carry the box, no matter how few the contents, to the garage, or wherever you're stacking giveaways. You don't have to decide which charity or friend is going to get them now, either.  Stop there.  Sit with a lemonade (obviously, a glass of wine is out of the question, you're drinking for two) and picture that pile that is now Out Of Your Life. 

And so on.  It sounds like measuring life in coffee spoons.  It sounds like it will never get done.  Keep repeating your mantras: screw perfectionism, I did one thing, and that's all I have to do for my reward.  And face it, it never does ALL get done.  I'm never going to stand on the flight deck with a "Mission Accomplished" banner.  (Uh oh, there's another war metaphor.  Sorry.)  But it gets easier, the piles become smaller, larger tasks become less scary, and you get braver and braver.  And more self-forgiving, because you have more on the "done" side of the scales than you did when you started. 

And thus endeth the lesson.

How'm I doing?  Well, I'm a lot more relaxed, and I'm actually to the point that I can find most of my art supplies, and have FINISHED a long-overdue gift.  Tomorrow, it's going in the mail.  And I'll get oodles of doggy biscuits in return when the recipient thanks me.  It's not done.  There are still boxes in the garage.  My shelves, while full, are not in alphabetical or subject matter order, but I can't afford to think about it.  It's better.  Good dog.

.

The Woman Who Mistook Her Brain For A Dog

Lazarus walks -- I'm yet again clearing out the Return Of The Collyer Brothers around the house, particularly in my studio.  When it’s tamed in there, I may unearth all the constituent parts of several projects languishing since March and finish them.  Two art books, one altered book, and the long-awaited vintage family album of photos taken between the Civil War and 1900.  This result is the happy outcome of some brain science I've been reading about.  The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge describes the revolutionary advances in the field of neuroplasticity. It's a great follow-up to all the Oliver Sacks books about "funny brains" I've gobbled since the first of the year.

Basically, neuroplasticity is how the brain can and does physically wire and re-wire itself, adapting to brain injury, using unused territory, making new and breaking old connections.  Old school neurology thought that various skills were locked into specific sites, and while the normal brain has its preferences, its physiology is sufficiently plastic, i.e. changeable, to adapt. Electrical activity in the neurons and its chemical environment work symbiotically.  Brain chemistry reinforces bad or good neuronal associations, from fetishes and addictions to stoic strengths.  We all sorta knew this instinctively, but brain scans and other recent advances in mapping show just how dramatically this theory plays out. The useful part is knowing how to train or re-train brains, impaired or otherwise.  Unwittingly, I've served as my own lab rat, or lab dog, as it were, over the last few years.

For me, 2003-2004 were such emotionally ghastly years that it bent my brain, more than it was already bent, which was considerably.  In the midst of the worst psychic pain of my life, I was committed to tasks that all involved organization, planning, creating (or trying to create) order out of chaos: house remodeling with limited funds, sorting and packing acres of possessions for three separate moves, the logistics of divorce and selling a house, etc.  I also embarked obsessively on physical self-improvement.  It just so happened that the accompanying brain chemistry and emotions were agonizing, so the payoff was more misery for completing these tasks.  (If they ever got finished ... I'm still cleaning up messes from 5 years ago.)  In effect, I was giving myself a mental training consisting of "good dog, here’s your whipping, and NO biscuit."  Like that beaten dog, my badly trained brain then whimpered and trembled when presented with any similar job -- whether actual physical clutter, attending to my diet and exercise, more abstract business or financial organization, or bringing any, ANY, plan to completion.  I thought that my mental abilities for these things, marginal at best, had become permanently lost, like speech for a stroke victim.

Well, neuroplasticity studies have shown hope for mistreated dogs and aphasiatics. "Neurons that fire together wire together," even damaged ones, and improvement can appear with astonishing rapidity when specially designed exercises are given to autistics, ADD's, OCD's, and brain injury patients, especially via computer.  I found a curative exercise in the unlikely and unexpected form of a computer game.  I normally avoid them, but I played "Hell's Kitchen" once and LURVED it so much that I bought it and played for 30-60 minutes every day for the past couple of weeks.  The game is idiotic on the surface.  It's based on the cooking reality show, where contestants run a restaurant under a tyrannical chef and brutal time constraints -- juggling customers, cooking, prioritizing service and preparation tasks.  The game didn't teach me knife skills or recipes, but as I got good at it, I was training, with positive rewards for completion, my ability to break down chaos into manageable tasks in an orderly fashion.  I found I had better mental energy all day if I played the game for about half an hour first thing in the morning.

 Within a week, I was able to start clearing clutter for short periods without panic attacks, and handled other small but long delayed jobs that formerly left me bedridden just to contemplate.  I made the connection between game and increased functionality only a couple of days ago, and it's undeniable.  Compared to less bent brains, I'm barely crawling, but I continue to improve and feel at no risk of overtraining and ending up as anal as Martha Stewart.  I plan to treat my beaten dog of a brain better in the future -- "Good dog, THREE biscuits!"

What confounds me, now that I’ve experienced a full cycle of neuroplasticity in action, is how some people facing even more agonizing psychic and work/life demands do not end up crippled.  I have a friend who endured two solid years of unimaginable emotional wreckage and adversity, yet she soldiers on, a little shaky, but intact.  I started with less skill and worse brain chemistry, I know, and maybe her coping abilities were just too hard-wired to break.  In other words, her dog could survive without biscuits for a while.  A close relation also had a full-life catastrophic meltdown, and very publicly, to boot.  I’m sure he has private scars, but he’s still in the game. Some folks have neuronal wiring as resilient under stress as a pit bull; fortunately, these friends are much less likely to bite.  

How’s your dog doing these days? Sit, Ubu, sit.

PS: It's amazing how many hits my blog gets through Google searches for "Collyer Brothers."  Occasionally, someone leaves an anguished comment about the effects of compulsive cluttering and hoarding.  There's not much out there to read -- it's a hidden illness by its nature until exposed by a dramatic denoument, as with the Collyer Brothers.  My version is mild and the improvement merely anecdotal, but suggestive.  Perhaps more serious cases could benefit from similar neural calisthenics.  If a neuroplasticity researcher stumbles across this account, I urge this for your next grant application.  It could be an interesting study.

Order from Chaos: The Tide Has Turned

This is my story of STUFF.  I've been engaged, with varying degrees of intensity, in the process of dealing with STUFF since I moved here to Bakersfield-by-the-Sea in 2004.  I moved here literally with the shirt on my back and nothing else.  My first order of business the next day was to buy a few low-cost changes of t-shirts and undies at Target.  Through the kindness of friends, my cat and car arrived before the week was out.  I should have known when I was well off.  Within a month, virtually everything contained in a three-bed, two-bath house complete with huge and full basement and garage arrived in a giant Bekins truck and took up temporary residence in a storage locker.  I had packed some myself, the rest was done by my ex, and although he did an excellent job, I didn't know, for example, if the box marked "XMAS" meant wrapping paper, ornament, holiday dishes, lights or that giant wicker reindeer.  And so on, through "Kitchen", "Books" and "Clothes."  Not his fault, but the sheer volume of STUFF prevented a careful catalog or editing. 

A few months later, I moved the whole mess into a medium-size condo, and once I had placed the furniture, and opened the boxes obviously containing the necessities of life, I stacked the mystery boxes to the sides of the garage and explored them only to the extent that internal storage and deep depression permitted.  Once I had enough clearance for my VW Beetle, a certain paralysis took hold.  My former manic enthusiasms were painfully demonstrated by the sheer number of boxes labeled "Fragile: Cakestands" or "Eggbeaters" or whatever other collection frenzy I had embarked upon during my years in San Francisco.  Just reading the notations brought on blue fugue states   Instead, I indulged in a new buying spree for art and craft supplies, and since I make, among other things, assemblage from "found objects" (translation: anything and everything, dirty, tattered and rusty preferred) I had free reign to collect STUFF that defied easy categorization.   I kept up with most of it in the craft room/studio, with shelves, a closet and a huge wardrobe crammed with boxes labeled "Doll Heads, Medium" and "Game Pieces" and, in desperation, "All Kinds of Metal Shit."  Still, eventually, inevitably, it got away from me over the next two years, despite occasional efforts to organize.   Piles of STUFF nearly prevented any movement at all in the room.

When I knew I was moving into two rooms and a bath in my mother's immaculate house which she had organized with a Virgo's OCD intensity, I made a herculean push and succeeded fairly well in sorting all non-art/craft possessions into "Keep & Move In" "Sell" "Donate," a carefully disciplined "Store" category and an amazing tottering pile of "Toss".  I packed up new boxes, neatly labeled, or simply opened and closed the existing ones and moved them into the appropriate class.  I placed ads in the paper, called any charity that made pick ups, and bagged the "Toss" and made midnight runs to the dumpster behind Ralph's.  It was grueling and took the entire month  Then came the day before the move and I realized I had 24 hours to tackle the art/craft STUFF.   I swallowed my secret emergency stash of three hits of speed (overlooked in my sobriety housecleaning, found during the bathroom clearance and hoarded for just this contingency). Starting at the door of the craft room, I filled a box with what came to hand, scribbled "CRAFTS" on the side, slapped on tape, toted it downstairs and repeated the process.  By that time the next day, with no sleep, two pizza deliveries, and a run to Target for a car full of more big ass plastic tubs, I had reached the back wall and the movers were ringing the doorbell.  The "CRAFTS" stack dwarfed all others.  Mom had promised me the use of her small but immaculate office for a crafts room, so now I had three empty rooms and half a garage to fill at my destination.  Practicing the familial talent for denial that has served me so well, I said, "I'll think about that tomorrow," and spent six months sorting, shelving and dealing with everything BUT the "CRAFTS," which ended up filling, floor to ceiling, the half of Mom's immaculate garage not taken up with her big ass Mafia car.

It has now been a calendar year since I've done arts/crafts except for educational excursions with supplied materials.  I have made half-hearted stabs at unpacking, with the unhappy result that the living room AND the garage AND the craft room were filled with boxes, opened and abandoned in despair.   There was no easy starting point.  There was no starting point at all.

After my trip to Minnesota for my book art tutorials, I was newly energized.  In late May, I began.  The pace was glacial, and some days I only had ten minutes before my back was screaming, or panic, hyperventilation and nausea set in.  Some days were better, and slowly, generic "CRAFTS" became piles of categories, reorganization of which were required sometimes as new sub-categories emerged, or a newly decanted mystery box revealed a fundamental flaw in the system. 

In the meantime, the office-craft-room-studio-to-be was remodeled: the very '80's padded brocade came off the walls, requiring resurfacing before the repainting could be done; existing shelving and cabinetry was cleaned and reinforced; new book shelving installed, twelve (12) tall plastic drawer units purchased, file cabinet refurbished and filled with folders; and computer desk delivered and "EASY NO-TOOL ASSEMBLY" accomplished with a great deal of profanity and perspiration.  All of this awaited the "two-weeks-promised-but-two-months-in-practice" purchase and installation of the Pergo floor (Thanks, Lowe's, grrrrrrr...) to replace the carpet, destroyed by my mother's late cat.

Several of the category piles have been sorted to a fine anality and are in place: paper (oh, yeah, it sounds easy, but if you Google "paper storage" or "paper organization" for crafters, you'll see how obsessive an enterprise this is); jewelry and beading supplies, ribbon and fibers and lace oh my, "fasteners" (I know what it means, never mind), some books, some scrapbooks, some of the "All Kinds of Metal Shit," all stamps and ink and stamping accouterments, and my entire collection of collage images equaled only by the Library of Congress.  Still to go: general office supplies, adhesives, computer-related miscellany, cloth, knitting, "All Kinds of Wood Shit", game pieces and decks of cards (tarot, playing, Beatle and Diana Rigg Avenger Cards, among others), and the remainder of the unfinished categories mentioned above.

All of this has been slowly driving my poor mother around the bend.  She grew up with clutter and in reaction makes Felix Unger look like a piker in the neat department, and although she has one or two beloved collections (jewelry, lamps, vases), she would be happy in a single well-lit room with one spoon and one bowl.  Her mother's clutter gene skipped to my generation, so we are each other's karmic punishment for our respective schools of OCD.  I cannot harness her abilities to conquer this insanity, however, because a) she takes one look at it and runs shrieking from the room, erupting in hives, b) her preferred solution is to grab kerosene and light a match, and c) she's on an oxygen tank, for god's sake.  I may be certifiable, but I'm not a monster.

Now I have gotten my ass in high organizational gear, and I'm actually having fun.  The garage is empty but for the Mafia Car and a new "donate" pile which will disappear on Thursday to benefit the battered women's shelter.  My labeling machine is my new best friend, and better descriptions appear on the drawers than "Miscellaneous Smelly Crap" (that referred to some mildewy yardage purchased at a garage sale for a song, now washed, ironed, folded and Febreezed into submission).  I still have my idiosyncratic poetic bent in description, but I know the drawer next to "Beads" (color sorted!) which I have marked "Sparkletown!" holds sequins and rhinestones.  By size and color.

I am now at the stage I call "sorting pepper from fly shit."  For example, I have far too many buttons to simply have a "Button" drawer.  No, they must be sorted into those with holes and those with shanks, by color, source material (cloth? wood? plastic? metal? shell?) and "interesting" from "plain."  I sit in front of HGTV by the hour surrounded by those wonderfully useful plastic hardware/fish hook/etc bins making decision after decision, feeling hugely competent and accomplished.  This flush of success has its drawbacks.  Last night I had a single endless dream of sorting, what I don't know.  It was very boring.  This morning, diving back into the button process, I was nearing the end when a button of wood and leather with both silver and gold accents came up.  I screamed "FUCK YOU!" at the defenseless thing, startling my mother from her paper and coffee across the table.  We giggled, my giggles began to verge into hysteria, and I knew it was time for a calm, restorative walk on the beach.

Which did the trick of taking my mind off of things.  Mostly because I discovered a dead and rotting body half-buried in the sand.  Really, no lie. But that's another story.  I'll get to that later. First, back to the buttons.

Collyer Brothers, Redux

An old post of mine seems to have hit a nerve.  I wrote about the legendary Collyer Brothers here, a while back, and today I received a heartbreaking reply.  Also, someone commented a few months ago about her own Collyeresque tendencies.  I wanted to write back to the most recent correspondent, the son of an OCD disposaphobic.  As I suspected, the e-mail link was false and my reply was not delivered.  I post the following here as an open letter I hope the son receives.

Dear My Dum Luk:

I don't know you, but you couldn't be making this up.  My heart breaks for you.  My post made light of a serious, terrifying condition.  I did so because I saw its seeds in myself.  I'm not there -- but I can see how easily I could, with one tiny change in the mysteries of brain chemistry, arrive there.  Even now, months after that post and a subsequent move, I cannot approach the piles of boxes of my art materials for more than an hour at a time.  Organizing it terrifies me and I don't know why.  I feel, at those times while I am sorting and organizing that I do make some progress, like I'm capable -- but then weeks go by before I can try again.  The chaos is contained in the garage, like a genie in a bottle, so I can get on the rest of my life, for now.  But I really love my art.  I want all that stuff put where I can use it, make art again.  I don't understand this and I am in therapy and all she says is, "keep trying."  I think it will work out and I'll get better but I'm incredibly scared of ending up like your dad.

I reveal this to you to try to speak for your dad.  I am at a midpoint between sanity and not, between you and him.  I don't have any answers.  But I do feel the pain of your side too.  I nursed my own father through Alzheimer's and watched the slow dissolution of his mind.  It was a blessing when he passed away from a massive sudden heart attack before he had forgotten who I was -- but he was far from the man I knew at that point.  He was in assisted living and would not bathe, would not shave, "lost" cash, prized possessions, and blamed me.  Or anyone around.  Or some paranoid conspiracy.  I am now living with my mother who is slipping away with a terminal illness.  My "karma", if you will, seems to require me to fill this role.  I love my parents and as painful as it is, I am grateful to repay the loving care and effort they expended in my own upbringing.

For now, no one thinks I'm OCD.  I am diagnosed bipolar, quite accurately, and I don't need or want another disorder.  I don't dumpster dive but I see its attraction.  There's a reason I'm drawn to assemblage art with "found objects".  There are periods, in hypomania, where I see a hidden connection between miscellaneous, random objects, and when I connect them correctly in accordance with my vision of that connection, I think I have achieved art.  And in the cold light of reality, I believe there is a link between this madness and true art.  I am also a poet -- of some repute and recognition.  I have won prestigious awards and have been published.  I simply make the same manic word connections that I do with objects, unusual connections to the sane but somehow valid.  The point I'm trying to make is that there is a role in society for the cliche of the mad artist.  I am bright enough to step aside from my illness and do research, and find some compensations.  I would recommend to you the book here - it is about how so many artists suffer(ed) from bipolar disorder, but I think the author could have included OCD and other disorders.  It is my comfort when I despair with my mental illness.  Unfortunately, there are those on the spectrum who fail to reach the role of artist and live a tortured life without validating achievement like your dad

Like I said, I don't have answers.  But if it would help to correspond, if I can be a midpoint, a medium, please write back.  Your post was a plea and I hope I can offer some insight.  You are being such a good son -- even if your father doesn't recognize it, is incapable of that recognition, I can see it and I admire you greatly. I hope that in some small way, I could help you with your pain.  My heart goes out to you.  I would be honored to talk to you again.

Best wishes,

Lisa (aka Fragile Industries)

Me and the Collyer Brothers

Homer Lusk Collyer (November 1881- March 21, 1947) and Langley Collyer (October 1885 -March 1947) were two brothers who became famous because of their reclusiveness, filth and compulsive hoarding.. The brothers are often cited as a paradigmatic example of compulsive hoarding associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder, as well as disposophobia,  or Collyer Brothers Syndrome, a fear of throwing anything away. For decades, neighborhood rumors swirled around the rarely-seen, unemployed men and their home at 2078 Fifth Avenue (at the corner of 128th Street), in Manhattan, where they obsessively collected newspapers, books, furniture, musical instruments, and many other items, with booby-traps set up in corridors and doorways to protect against intruders. Both were eventually found dead in the Harlem brownstone where they had lived as hermits, surrounded by over one hundred tons of junk that they had amassed over several decades.  That's one of their more navigable rooms pictured to the left.

In total, police and workmen took 103 tons of garbage out of the house. What was salvageable from it fetched less than $2,000 at auction; the cumulative estate of the Collyer brothers was valued at $91,000, of which $20,000 worth was in the form of personal property (jewelry, cash, securities and the like). Eventually the house was torn down as a fire hazard.

On April 8, 1947 (15 days after the search and excavation of the house began), workman Artie Matthews found the dead body of Langley Collyer just ten feet from where Homer had died. A suitcase and three huge bundles of newspapers covered his body. Langley had been crawling through their newspaper tunnel to bring food to his paralyzed brother when one of his own booby traps fell down and crushed him. Homer, blind and paralyzed, starved to death several days later.

The foregoing are selections from the disturbing full story at Wikipedia.

The Collyer boys have been on my mind for the past few days.  I have a tendency to be a bit of a packrat, and not the best housekeeper on the block.  Since I started my latest mania I haven't done a thing to my condo in the way of cleaning.  It's not yet a Superfund site, nor are Haz-Mat spacesuits necessary to enter.  The cat box is cleaned scrupulously (because if I don't, they tend to express their displeasure in the most obvious way on the carpet), the trash is taken out, and I've stopped my subscription to the newspaper, so no towers of newsprint threaten me.  Dishes aren't a problem, because I've temporarily abandoned cooking anything more complex than a microwave diet dinner or a sandwich, and I'm using paper plates.  I'm at least that realistic about my inaction on the Good Housekeeping Seal Approval front.  Still, no dusting, no vaccuming, no straightening, the pile of mail on my dining room table is taking on the appearance of a scale model of Everest, and my laundry has been limited to picking one load at a time out of the hamper (and the pile next to it) to get me to the next week.  The worst example is my craft/computer room, where I've been spending most of my time lately.

I have been filling in the gaps of my necessary (if only in my diseased mind) supplies to becoming an online art entrepreneur.  I do love shopping.  Especially online.  I posted about this earlier.  Between eBay, other mail-order purchases, and the occasional trip to a thrift or craft store, and my lack of attention to keeping things perfectly organized even before I started the website, the room was starting to look a bit Collyer-esque.  Added to the art supplies are organizational purchases from Office Depot and elsewhere to get the room in order -- files, craft storage boxes with little compartments, etc.  Yesterday I had a burst of energy, rolled up my sleeves and started in.  Armed with my label-maker, I began at the bookshelf and armoire, containing books for reference, books for altering, books for ripping stuff out of.  Also there are scrapbooks, completed and in progress, a bazillion photos -- both mine and family inheritances, paper goods and miscellaneous embellishments.  I intend to set up a system that I can keep up to date and that will make my creative process smooth. 

The process of organization starts with sorting stuff into categories.  And subcategories.  The heirarchical decisions are endless -- does this Christmas card vintage image of cats frolicking in the snow belong in the Christmas pile, the animal pile, or the vintage pile, of loose collage images I'm filing by theme?  After a few hours, I made a serious vow never to buy anything again.  A few hours after that, I nearly threw a lit match on all the little piles just to be done with it.  Today, refreshed, I'm digging in again.  There's an amazing amount of crap.  That's the danger of collage/altered/assemblage/found art.  Anything and everything is, in theory, useable.  I am so accquisitive that I take home every rusty bottlecap and magazine clipping.  In time, unchecked, I would be found in a few years, crushed under a pile of "art" supplies.  With the Collyer Brothers as a cautionary tale, I really, really, really, intend to get this under control.  Now.

Evidence of the work in progress:

sorting ephemera, photos, images

destinations for said junk:

Light a candle, say a prayer.  I haven't even gotten to the new shipment of acrylic paint.