Nina's Blog - Friday 31st May 2024

@ArishMell Sadly not. The tidying succeeded in revealing rather less than half a square metre of dining room table. Just enough space for two of us to sit side by side and have breakfast.

@ninalanyon Oh dear! I thought my home is cluttered!

@ArishMell My home back in Norway is also cluttered, definitely untidy. But my dining table is always clear as are all the easy chairs and settees. I'm quite certain that the clutter in my sister's place has an effect on her and her son's mental health. She often has to buy things that certainly already exist in the house simply because they cannot be found,

I sometimes think that she would be better off if she were poor so that she would have to use what she has instead of just driving into town to buy more.

@ninalanyon
Can't find it so buy another... Or improvise unsatisfactorily. Yes, been there, done that.

I think it very hard to break out of permanent clutter, because the whole process is so daunting it is difficult to know where and how to start. Consequently it becomes depressing and self-defeating, because you manage no more than a bit of re-arranging.

I find the best way is small bites: e.g. one evening I explored various folders and ejected nearly a ream of long-redundant papers into the green bin. Last week, when searching for a particular thing, I found that but also a suit and some other clothes long forgotten. I tried the suit - it didn't fit - gave all these clothes to a charity shop.

Then there's the extension lead I'd accidentally severed... Do I mend it, or take it to the Council skip yard? I've managed with it lying broken in the spare room for about four years now...


Once, I wanted to perform a small but awkward mathematical calculation a bit too hard to do purely long-hand. Failed to find my calculator. Slide-rule? Could not find that. Log. tables? (I did not have a computer at the time, twenty or so years ago.) Luckily I have books containing them, so completed the "sums". Next day I bought a new scientific calculator... Three weeks later, looking for something else, I found the absent sums-box in a drawer I'm sure I'd not put it in.

@ArishMell I understand exactly what you mean about doing it in small bites. But in this household the small bites are so small and infrequent that they don't keep up with the accumulation of new clutter. This specific bit of tidying was known to be necessary at least six months ago because the event they were going to was planned that long ago and i was going to dog sit. So it isn't that they didn't have time.

@ninalanyon I see. A sad do - I hope they doe eventually sort themselves out... then the house.