REAL, BUT NOT SO SIMPLE

About twice a year, I get the urge to tidy up. This may not sound like such a big deal to the average person, but to someone who lives among binders and papers and books, it most certainly is. I'm a book slob.

Wait a minute though; maybe "slob" is too harsh a word. Slob conjures up nasty images. Pictures of those hoarders featured on TV come to mind; people who leave half-eaten pastrami sandwiches on their living room windowsills to become fuzzy green food fairs for white, shapeless insects. Folks who live with fossilized cat turds peppered down the hallways of their houses. That's not me. I wash my dishes and my floors, and I actually like vacuuming and doing laundry. It's just that I'm...er...kind of messy. Clutter is my nemesis. It follows me around, despite my committed attempts to conquer it regularly.

It always starts out well, with multitudes of garbage bags that suddenly appear, bursting with clothes (seldom worn) destined for the Sally Ann. My shredder works overtime and smokes in protest; closets are purged. Old CD's are chucked. Papers are sorted, organized, boxed, labelled and stored away.

My writing room gets regular facelifts, too, and emerges resplendent with beautifully alphabetized bookshelves, bright yellow file folders, and new spiffy electric blue labels from Staple. There will also be a dazzling new accordion-style file box (this year's is lime green. Very trendy.)

It doesn't stop there. I move on to the bulletin boards. I have three: one in the kitchen, one in the den, and one in my writing room, reserved, of course, for writing-related stuff. But when I check said boards, all three are salt and peppered to death with colourful pushpins attached to entirely irrelevant things – an old menu from a Chinese take-out in Vancouver that we never ate at. A sale on lawnmowers from October 2009. A photo of a Donald Trump cake. (Please; this must be a joke) A voucher for Nutri-Max dog food (expired). A set of keys with a rubber pirate head fob that doesn't belong to anyone in our house. A strip of postage stamps (without any stamps left) A Pink Floyd sticker (pretty cool, actually. I'll save that), and the recycling schedule for the village where I live from two years ago. You get the picture.

Just how does this happen? Everything goes so well for weeks, and then it's back to same old, same old. Yours truly, spending three and a half days looking for my bike helmet. Or me, unable to find my dollar store reading glasses... AGAIN, even though I own about thirty pairs of the damn things.

I used to laugh and say, "Oh, being scatterbrained is the sign of a creative mind." Actually, being scatterbrained is a sign of someone who spends too much time inside his or her own head. It gets crowded in mine. Even so, the self-involved should still be able to get out of their own way from time to time, shouldn't they? There are numerous books and articles written about this, but alas, they haven't helped me yet.

I've never been one to buy women's magazines but occasionally the clean, uncluttered and mesmerizing power of the covers of "Real Simple" suck me in. They are beautiful, with soft background colours of cornflower blue, mint green, early morning coral, and Sahara gold. I try to ignore them as I wait in line with my groceries the same way someone else might fight the temptation to crack a tabloid to read about the latest celebrity's battle with cellulite. (Although, sometimes I'll sneak a peek at those, too. I mean, it's somewhat gratifying to see a well-known celebrity walking away from the camera with a whole lotta CCA* going on! Hello?)

But those Real Simple magazines? Well, as I load my foodstuffs onto the conveyer belt and gaze at the image on this month's cover—a white painted stool sitting in a shaft of morning sunlight. Next to it, a basket of cut sunflowers rests on a scrubbed wide-plank fir floor beside a sleeping Calico cat, and suddenly, I have an overwhelming desire to change everything about my life. I suddenly want to wear unbleached cotton skirts, wash my hair with homemade nettle rinse, paint my kitchen floor ox-blood red, and change my name to something understated and honest; a simple, genuine name like "Ruth" or "Jane."

So, yeah, occasionally I'll buy the magazine, and afterwards, I will make a pact to simplify my life. I'll talk slower. Move slower; say "no" more. Eat porridge habitually. Drink water from cut crystal glasses with wedges of lemon in it. Listen to less rock and more Chopin (while wearing the unbleached cotton skirt and drinking the water).

It's a nice fantasy, and for about three minutes, I might even believe it. But in the end, I'm just left with more magazines to recycle during my bi-annual clutter-purge.

Maybe I shouldn't worry about it so much. I'm now over half a century old. Can you really teach an old dog, new tricks? And in the grand scheme of things, just how important is this whole tidy thing? (And please don't tell me to go and read Marie Kondo's book on the subject. I'll just end up feeling bad about myself.)

Anyway, when I come to the end of this life, will I really give a fat rat's ass if my spice racks were alphabetized? If the things in my bathroom sat in designated spots in pretty little white wicker baskets? No. I think not.

There. I feel better. Time to walk the dog. That is, if I can find the leash, because the only things on the "dog" hook by the door is a stray sock, a broken bungee cord and a set of keys to the car we sold four months ago.

Sigh.

P.S. CCA stands for Cottage Cheese Ass

P.P.S. Does anyone alphabetize their spice jars in real life?