How I Got Started

It was after the fourth move that I heard a woman lecture on getting organized. I laughed. She had no conception of what it was like around our house! After the end of her lecture she agreed to take me on as a student. She came to my house, looked in all the rooms, closets, drawers, cupboards, said "Hmmmmm," asked me a few questions beginning with "why?" Then she was ready...

She gazed at me like an oracle, and with profound wisdom stated: "You are a person who sees life far down the trail and in great detail. Because of this you are overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task that needs to be done."

"You mean I'm NOT lazy?" What a novel idea!

"The solution to your problem is to break down the task at hand into do able pieces, like eating an elephant--one bite at a time!"

After determining the greatest thorn in my side was my desk, she gave me my first weekly assignment.

"Clear the desk."

My week passed quickly--don't they always? Mary Alice came back for my next "lesson."

"You said you did your assignment."

"I did." I was devastated. I thought I had done so well...

"But the desk looks just the same."

"No it doesn't. I removed everything I could do without. Two rubber bands and a paper clip."

Barely hiding her exasperation, she began coldly clearing the desktop. All my important papers were on that desk. How could I ever find anything if she cleared it into a box?

She told me not to worry about it, and that we'd take care of it next week. She didn't even bother to give me another assignment. Realizing by this time I would need a kick start, Mary Alice asked the next week, "Where can we put things out of the family traffic pattern? I didn't even know the family had a traffic pattern!

"The solarium, I guess. Why are you taking the books off the shelf?"

"We are starting to clear. We can't organize anything unless we begin clear." Her idea of clear (bare to the bone) was not my idea of clear (two rubber bands and a paper clip). An hour later she announced, "See you next week."

I wailed, "What am I gonna to do with this pile?" It was literally a pile five feet high and six feet wide.

"Do you have a piece of typing paper and a black felt pen?"

I found both in the pile. She took the pen and marked the paper, "TO BE FILED" and propped it in plain sight on the pile.

My husband hit the ceiling when he saw the mess. I tried to reassure him...

"I'm taking lessons."

"Yeah, sure. But get this mess outta here!"

The kids finked. "Dad, this old bat came and looked in all our drawers and cupboards. Can you believe anyone could be so snoopy?"

I said quietly, "She's not old."

I worked several years learning tricks of the trade. I gradually turned my library into a showplace. I changed my filing system to one that worked, and I learned how to calendar my time.

I began to see that I could be an organized person and my home could live up to its potential. It could become a beautiful showplace, one where I could be proud to invite my friends, even my mother-in-law.

Our house became known as the happenin' place. The local crowd hung out with us. We had dances and parties. There was usually a group of teenagers surrounding my chair gossiping, laughing, crying or whatever they needed to do at the time. A good part of the time mine weren't among them. In later years I was told how much those sessions meant to the various teenagers. "I felt I could come visit you anytime and I would be welcome. You made me feel I was important and what I had to say was of worth to you, even when I was just being a typical teenager."

People were coming to me now and saying, "I wish my house looked like yours." Then they would explain and excuse, saying, "I'm not really lazy, I just can't get organized." My daughter said, "Your house makes my heart sing!" I went from a mountain of laundry on the sofa to "I wish my house looked like yours." How did that happen? The day came when I was asked to give a lecture on how to get organized. I couldn't believe it!

During the intermission of my first lecture, I was surrounded by people who wanted to have more help, which led to the formation of a group we later called Packrats "Anony-mouse".

Working with this group, I discovered that being a packrat is neither good nor bad. Look at the animal kingdom. The ant spends its entire life in the quest for something to "pack" back home. We even say we "squirrel away" things for later. So why should we care if we save things because they "can be used later?"

I can't remember when I didn't save "things" having special meaning to me but not to anyone else. A major trauma of my life came when a well-meaning relative "cleaned out" my treasure drawer and "got rid of all that junk." I was eleven and didn't think life would be worth living without my treasures. Thirty-five years later I had gathered more mountains of personal "memoirs," souvenirs--you name it, I kept it. Fibber McGee's closet couldn't hold a candle to mine. I used to tell the kids, "Here, take this and put it away" until #1 son, then age 6, said, "Sorry. We've run out of away."

Once, when I had more time than money, I took down the apple box marked "DIAPERS." I figured, as the youngest child was now in college, maybe that was one item I could part with. Imagine my surprise when I lifted the cover to discover bundle after bundle of letters tied with blue satin ribbon.

I looked at the dates on the envelopes...1947, 1950, 1953...G'wan! Who are you tryin' to kid? Nobody keeps letters thirty-five years. I wonder where I got them? Who could they possibly belong to? I sat down, put up my feet and began to untie the ribbon.

"My dearest one..."

My WHO?

I sat up and began to read more rapidly, then more slowly. At first I laughed, then I cried...By late afternoon I had a mountain of pages of old letters surrounding me. One of the kids came in, saw my tears and said,

"What's up, Ma?" and picked up a recently discarded page covered with splotches and scrawling.

"And so my dearest one I'm asking you to marry me..."

"What IS this garbage Mom? You writing a Soap Opera? This stuff is so dorky the Soaps wouldn't have it."

"Put that down! That's proof that once I was young and somebody loved me."

"No kiddin'. Who?"

Just before Darling, my beloved husband, arrived I stuffed the mountain into a 30-gallon trash bag, filled it to the brim, and set it outside.

So much for nostalgia.

Darling isn't much of a writer. A post card every other decade or so is about his limit.

At the next meeting the group helped me part with more "nostalgia" by repeating the club creed..."Have you used it in the last two months? Will you use it in the next two months? If in doubt throw it out."

One of my support team picked up an old plastic gallon milk container half full of sand and asked, "What is this?"

"Oh. That's my sand..."

"Sand?"

"Yes. I use it for the weight to keep my table dolls from falling over..."

"Dolls? Shall we throw it out?"

"NO! We really had a hard time finding that sand..."

She looked out the window into the horizon where as far as the eye could see was acres and acres of the Mojave Desert.

"But, you don't understand...we did have a hard time finding that sand..."

Two of my support team held my hand as a third poured out the sand.

"I AM A PACKRAT. I TAKE LIFE ONE STEP AT A TIME. WITH THE HELP OF PACKRATS ANONYMOUS AND MY GOOD FRIENDS I AM ON THE SLOW ROAD TO RECOVERY."

Couldn't I just keep one letter proposing marriage and one container of sand? (You don't cure a packrat, you just retrain them.)

Have you noticed packrats often marry "tossers?" This would probably be a good thing except tossers are not historians and they usually throw out the good stuff and keep the garbage. People who have a difficult time parting with things but an easy time acquiring them just may be historians who haven't learned to discern what makes history, so they keep everything.

I was at the National Archives listening to the archivist lecture. I was in shock! She was one of us! The United States Government paid her to keep things. All kinds of things. At the end of her lecture she said, "If you'd be interested in becoming an archivist..." She went on to list the schooling required. It was a job for the "intelligent." She ended with an emphatic statement of what was NOT wanted. "We DO NOT want you if you have LIBRARY skills! Librarians and archivists are on the opposite ends of the spectrum." She went on to tell about a legal battle once waged over a pocket on jeans. She had gathered a complete display on the history of pockets. It was stored as just that, "A History of Pockets"--and not under the Dewey decimal system, either!"

On visits to museums I've seen artifacts displayed from the everyday lives of generations of people. So my personal museum contains items from several generations of my own family. I have old newspapers of historical interest but leave the everyday collection of same to the library. I threw out all the log cabin syrup cans but kept my wooden spool thread carriers.

Visitors to "nostalgia" shops often comment, "We had one of those when we were kids" and then notice the selling price and wished they had kept one or two.

A PACKRAT MAY BE AN HISTORIAN who hasn't discovered his/her mission and isn't necessarily non-operational.

During one of my first Packrats Anonymous classes, I decided to give assignments every week. I decided to do the assignments along with them. When the lesson on timing chores came up, I did it too. I timed making my bed. I was shocked as I looked at the timer...fifteen seconds to make my bed? I had a hard time believing my eyes! Since that assignment was completed, my bed hasn't remained unmade. I could never again justify not making my bed because I didn't have "time." When I get up for the day, I take the covers in one hand, slide out of bed, turn around and pull the covers up, straighten them out, and there you are! The bed is nearly made for the day. Some straightening of the spread and pillows completes the job, and each time I re-enter the room I breathe a happy sigh. I am in charge of my life. My bed is made!