Chaos and clutter

 

The work area in my tiny kitchen.
That's where i cook, including hotplate and toaster oven. No stove.

The chaos in the cottage is subsiding—Jacob assembled the compost tumbler, and it sits proudly in the driveway, the computer cords arrived and I have my remote keyboard back, Sophie has a new supply of dog food. The only thing still not in proper order is my TCU email account—it won’t talk to my phone, and when I tried to re-install it, TCU told me there was no such account. Sigh. It will take a rather long call to the Help Desk, and I had other things on my mind this morning. So I put it off. I do still get that email on my computer, but I cannot send pictures from my phone.

Today I devoted myself to de-cluttering the cottage—sorting out what had accumulated on the coffee table, putting away laundry, putting Christmas cards into a package to save though I will probably never look at them again. Just generally clearing the surfaces. When I first moved into the cottage, Jacob was about ten, and I remember telling him clearly that in small spaces it was more important than ever to keep things neat and not to accumulate things you don’t need. About six months later, Colin was here, and he was puzzled about why the cottage looked so different to him. Finally, he said, “You’ve got more stuff. It’s more lived in.” There’s a fine line between “lived in” and cluttered. And I am, alas, like anyone else—I accumulate stuff that I don’t really need. Like the springform pan I just bought, or the sushi dishes I got in a White Elephant exchange which I finally put on the shelf with wine glasses this morning. Good thing I don’t have glass-fronted cabinets. Life in the cottage is a constant challenge of finding places for new things and deciding what I can part with. In that, I am goaded by Jordan who constantly asks, “Do you use this?”

My cottage is about six hundred square feet, spacious compared to some tiny homes. Since I moved in, I have become fascinated with the layout of tiny houses, and I follow every link to pictures of interiors. For some reason I don’t understand, I am drawn to those articles that tell you what John Q. Smith and his wife Susie did to convert a school bus into a livable home. I don’t find most of them livable. The interior invariably looks cluttered to me, and I look in vain for someplace comfortable to sit with company. Utilitarian is good up to a point, but I also want my creature comforts—and a certain order and tidiness is part of that. Many of those conversions—and other tiny houses—have sleeping lofts with ladders or steep stairs without railings—that would never have done for me, even in my salad days. Aside from the fact that I was never surefooted on stairs, I’d be afraid I’d sleepwalk in the night and take a tumble.

Sometimes I think it’s a competition among designers of tiny houses to see who can build the tiniest that is still functional. One lack I’ve noticed, not just in the bus conversions, is that there is no desk in almost all of these designs. Now I know not everyone spends as much desk time as I do in a day but still, don’t people have to have a spot where they can pay bills and keep records, send some emails, etc.? Somehow that says something about the tiny house approach to life that is significant, but I’m not sure how.

My cottage is about as tiny as I want to get—a living/office area, postage stamp kitchen, bedroom with a walk-in closet and a bathroom that, considering everything, is plenty spacious. It's just right for me, and I don't need more--except maybe more kitchen. I don’t think I can imagine getting any smaller. Were I to add space, it would be to enlarge the kitchen. I have said if I thought I was going to be cooking for another twenty years, I would invest in a top-notch kitchen designer to give me a kitchen, given the space, designed for efficiency and wheelchair cooking. Not a gamble I’m willing to take.

Long story short, I love my cottage and will continue to try to keep it as neat and uncluttered as possible. But bus conversions and the like are for the young at heart and adventuresome in spirit, neither of which describes me. That said, I know a novelist who, retired from her day job, lives and writes in a van conversion with her cat and travels all over the country, parking for a few days at a time in campsites to catch up on her writing. She loves it! My horoscope says such fiddle-footedness is not for me. I am a homebody rooted in place.

 

The importance of neatness and organization

My living room

cluttered with research

Ever since I’ve been in my tiny cottage, I’ve stressed the importance of keeping a small space free from clutter and mess. Twelve-year-old Jacob has been the particular recipient of my repetitive lectures. So here’s how my space looks these days. My desk is a cluttered mess, and my living/entertaining space not much better.

The problem? Research materials for my latest writing project. Papers are strewn everywhere, as I try to put all these photocopies in meaningful order—important, marginal, probably not useful. The problem is complicated because I inherited someone else’s research—more on that story another time.

Yesterday, friends from TCU Press came to do a podcast, and I felt obliged to make a clean

sweep of my desk, hiding most of the loose papers and stacking the couple of books and magazines in a neat pile. Jordan came along and promptly laid a couple of loose sheets on top, destroying the balance—I incorporated them into the pile. But by last night, my desk looked as you see it in the picture. You’d think I could at least read Bon Appetit and get it out of the way, but it takes me two or three times through a cooking magazine before I can discard it. I must be sure I’m not missing a recipe I can’t live without. And these days I am driven to go through all those research papers in that huge box, so reading fiction or food magazines seems a little frivolous to me.

Typical of my dilemma—yesterday I came across a master’s these that could be central, but it was missing the first forty pages, including the attribution. I wasn’t sure who wrote it, where it might be stored, etc. Then I discovered I have it in digital form on my computer. I run into duplication all over the place. But I keep plugging away—and I’m having fun.

Yesterday was also a day of surprises. I washed my hair early so it would dry before the podcast—and then came an unexpected phone call. Rosa was here two days earlier than expected to cut my hair. I can’t say enough about Rosa, who’s been keeping me trim for years and has become a treasured friend along the way. Since getting out is a bit hard for me, she comes by on her way to the salon about once a month, and we get a good visit while she snips and cuts.

So there I was—trim and neat for the podcast, if not scintillating on camera. I haven’t seen it yet, but I will share when I do. We mostly rehashed my writing career.

Another surprise, less pleasant: when I tried to refill my ice water, the cube dispenser got stuck and sprayed ice cubes all over the kitchen. Not easy to sweep up from a walker. I swept, put the broom and dustpan away, opened the freezer—and sprayed a second batch of cubes all over. Repeat sweeping.

Pleasant to end the day at Pacific Table with Betty—Caesar salad, fried oysters, and a decadent chocolate brownie topped with peanut butter ice cream. I think my appetite is returning.

My Life is in Disarray

Can you even see the little black dog on my lap?

Well, maybe not my whole life but surely my house. Downsizing continues. I now have four bags for Berry Good Buys—which benefits victims of domestic violence at Women’s Haven—and six or seven bags I will save for the Association for Retarded Citizens when they pick up in a couple of weeks.

This is how Sophie and I help—we lie there and watch, and I say yea or nay. Occasionally Jordan sets me to work sorting a bag or something. In one I found tax returns from 2006. If the seven-year-rule holds, I can get rid of those, though Colin will probably want to take them to Tomball where he can legally burn them. (We can’t do that in Fort Worth.)

What was once my guest room is now downsizing central—a disaster on wheels. A friend may spend the night tomorrow, and I’ll have to carve out someplace for her to sleep. Meanwhile, the detritus (a friend used that word last night at dinner, and I have adopted it) is spilling over into the rest of the house. My current project is to try to bring order to the rest of the house and ignore the guest room.

Tomorrow I will take bags to Berry Good Buys, which will make the living room look better, and the garbage carts will be empty so we can refill the recyclable with all the stuff in another corner of the living room. I will try to put away most of the stuff in my bedroom and find out what the boxes are. Yesterday, in cleaning the guest room closet and armoire, Jordan just put everything she didn’t know what to do with in my room. Sigh.

I used to be known for keeping a neat house. I didn’t really care if there were dust curls in the corners, but I wanted everything picked up and not cluttered. Word was, “Don’t set your coffee cup down or she’ll whisk it up and put it in the dishwasher.” I’m afraid those days are gone for at least a year until I am settled in my new quarters. Then I won’t tolerate any mess, loose papers, left-behind ice cream dishes or coffee cups. Small quarters don’t need clutter.

Meantime I’m trying to live with disarray.