This is one of those days when I am “chained” to the house in a five-hour window for a delivery. Five hours, in this day and age? At any rate, since it appears we may go all the way to the max time on that window, I was out most of yesterday and planned my inside to-do list accordingly. Last week when I attended the annual Chamber Conference, I was inadvertently inspired to tackle one of those things I do procrastinate about. The subject of this particular presentation was actually geared toward a different aspect of business, yet in the process of the discussion, I thought about how disorganized my office had become. I’ve never been a completely “clean desk” person nor do I own a label maker. On the other hand, I do like to have space on my table to write and enough order to my files to have a general idea of where they are. The “I’ll get to that soon” stack had grown, as had the “I need to file that” stack, and those plus the active project stacks had begun to spill into each other. This, of course, is not a task I recommend doing all in one day, so I divided it into chunks. Day One was separate and throw away the known trash. Day Two was file the writing related/personal and today is properly sort and divide the major volunteer work I am involved with and finish a couple of other things. Don’t get me wrong – there are still plenty of old files to go through, but the pieces I’m tackling allow me to return to a comfortable degree of order.
Oh, speaking of tasks one puts off – that reminds of something that has always made me chuckle. In my first novel, Orchids in the Snow, the main character was very conscientious about domestic matters. At one point in the story I had her cleaning the gasket of her refrigerator as she was trying to occupy her time. I was later amazed by how many women asked me, “You don’t really clean your refrigerator gasket, do you?” My answer was, “No, but I did have a friend who made that part of her spring cleaning.” It’s these interesting tidbits you store away because you never know when you might need them as a writer.
