In most of the years gone by, I have had limited success in seeing New Year’s resolutions through to at least the end of the second week of January.
Most of us have been told by armchair philosophers in our lives that the road to somewhere hot is paved with good intentions. My good intentions regarding resolutions have never gotten into the car let alone hit the road to anywhere.
Perhaps, I thought one day, the result for 2020 might have a happier outcome with a new decade beginning and one’s vision achieving the desired perfection.
Thus, I looked around and pledged to at least try to take two visible actions in 2020.
First, I would ensure that nothing would occupy our living room except the furniture and knick knacks that are meant to be displayed in that particular room.
Of course, there will be some exceptions to that resolution, one of them being the container in which we store the recyclable materials that will eventually be moved to the blue bin outdoors.
The second exception in that room is the old-style blue storage trunk that has been moved upstairs and which now acts as a storage unit for baking pans and containers previously accessed by making trips downstairs. With such repetitive journeys being a burden on an ailing back, a few years ago we moved them upstairs and put them into quickly overflowing totes.
So the trunk stays, and in fact, could be used for extra seating if we were ever overrun by large crowds of visitors.
The storage boxes related to my volunteer involvement are now out of sight in a room that is off-limits to visitors. Newspapers accumulated over many years have been sorted and recycled and other stuff has been donated to worthy community collectors and to the landfill.
I have to admit, it is a relief to welcome visitors and not have to say, “please excuse our mess” and further apologize for making them congregate in the kitchen. And speaking of the kitchen: one side of the table is mine, one side belongs to Housemate and the rest of the table is often a repository for items that seem to mysteriously accumulate — because we need them close at hand. Visitors are often told my side of the table is my office and I have to say, proudly, that it is set up efficiently with supplies of a regular office easily in reach.
I will continue to do my computer work at the table, and I suppose Housemate requires equal space but I do resolve to keep the table free from other clutter, based on my definition of what might be considered clutter.
So there they are: my public declaration of two resolutions that should be easy to maintain.
But already I am searching for a document and Housemate momentarily lost a magazine that had been close at hand for him. Both the document and magazine were part of the de-cluttering process.
Maybe the table resolution will require some modifications. Or perhaps I could move my office into the now-tidy living room. Hmmmm. Maybe. Thankfully there is still time to amend those resolutions.
Joyce Walter can be reached at [email protected]
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
