A few months ago I was reflecting on myself as a minimalist and Adrian guffawed. A guffaw is the kind of thing you just intuitively know what it is even though it’s the kind of thing you only ever see written down but never hear. I was so shocked by this, because although I would say I often have a lot of things spilling all around the house, I do like to think that I live in an orderly kind of way.
Feeling insulted by his guffaw, I repeated my claims of minimalism to my children, one of them looked at my in a perplexed way, ‘What do you mean?’ and the other was outright rude, ‘That’s ridiculous.’
Determined to demonstrate my truth, I embarked on this path of tidiness, (re)declaring myself to be a tidy person. This has been made a lot easier this week by the extreme clean I did on my workspace, and in particular by the box labelled ‘catalogues and pamphlets’. There is somewhere to put all of the random little things that gather like the pointy end of a whirlpool on the table in the kitchen.
One thing I have noticed about being a tidy person is that I’m spending a lot of time walking around the house carrying things from one place to another. The other thing I’ve noticed is that the more time I spend tidying, the more often I am looking around the house and thinking, ‘This isn’t a tidy house.’
While the general sense of tidiness has improved, there is a new sense of chaos as we have brought all of the Christmas boxes out and they are in the middle of the floor just where you walk in. It’s hard to say it’s a tidy space when we all have to walk around a big pile of things.
In honour of being a tidy person, yesterday I went to Officeworks to buy myself a small 2024 diary for my handbag, a large wall calendar, a display binder and manila inserts for the display binder. When I left Officeworks I had those four things and nothing more. That is definitely the actions of a tidy person.
Back at home, I saw the devastation of my new Christmas glasses, smashed into a million pieces. Somehow this is all tied into my decisions made at Officeworks, and it seemed to symbolise something about Christmas. A sign that I need to take care, and not get sucked into the vortex of Christmas consumerism. Three broke, I still have three, and last night I very much enjoyed a glass of fiano, my fingers wrapped awkwardly around the Christmas tree stem.
When I woke up this morning I gave thought to the idea that I might cancel my booking for my gym class. But I kept it, and now it’s time to leave if I want to make it in time. I am definitely a person who gets places on time. No one can argue with that.