Random Thoughts on Thursday: What's in A Name?

There are many many blessings in my life, of this I am aware. But few are as fabulous, as envied, as rare as that coveted real estate phenomenon known as...

The Bonus Room.

Here at Eden (which is what I have decided to call this home), we actually have a Bonus Room. It opens up into the living area (thus making it delightfully central), and it separates the guest wing from the master bedroom. It's a den, really--instead of a closet, there's a little nook with shelves in it. It's not HUGE by any stretch, but it's certainly large enough to accommodate a variety of objects.

At first, we called it the office. Or, more specifically, "The room we never go iIN to." And sometimes "The Clutter Room." Then I got into scrapbooking, and all of my recently-acquired supplies were piled into the room, with no organization. I began to call it the Scrap Room.

Himself began to call it the Crap Room.

In short order, however, I fell down the rabbit hole of crafts that scrapbooking had opened up. More supplies began to trickle into the condo. I began to daydream about painting terra cotta, making beautiful necklaces, generating mixed-media collages, conducting research into my novel, planning meals for the week ahead, assembling a dollhouse...And then, "(s)craproom" was no longer really the right word for it.

After taking the whole room through a major cleaning (not a purge; I'm not that enlightened), the room has been broken down into areas: the desk and shelves where the bills are paid and the homemaking/crafting books and supplies are stored; the "work area" where projects, laptop, and more supplies are stored; the "library" consisting of two 6 foot bookshelves crammed with more books, the kitty's litter box, and then, tucked away in a corner, my "spirituality area." There's a lot going on in this room!

At present, I try to refer to it as "The Craft Room." But every now and then, I feel compelled to call it "the studio." Something--perhaps that nasty Fear Voice that still screams loud and true after all these years, or else that still, small voice of cold, literal logic--tells me that that's pretentious and misleading. After all, studios are for artists, and no artist am I. Sure, I dream big, but at present, all I have are two scrapbook page spreads, one 70% finished fanfic epic, and one heck of a lot of big dreams. This does not an artist make, nor does it make a "studio."

Or does it?

There's Crazy. There's Neurotic. And Then There's Just Plain Dumb.

And I may, in fact, be all three.

Here's the thing: I am a clutterbug. I am an accumulator. I am an acquirer. I am not a minimalist. I own dozens of books I've never read. I own candles and incense that I don't burn. (In my defense, I usually just forget about them). When I latch on to a new hobby, I purchase all the requisite supplies (or at least all the supplies that I think are requisite), try my hand, and then in a week or two or three get diverted to some other hobby. Or, alternatively, I want to dabble in cooking but think I need all sorts of utensils and so I get them, and then, for some strange reason, the food never gets cooked.

What it boils down to, I suspect, that while my desires and intentions are good, I am afraid of trying, afraid of failing, and I am afraid of sucking at it. And so I acquire the items because in theory that's part of the whole project, and let's face it, I do NOT fail at acquisition. It's like I acquire and acquire and acquire to actually delay the process of creating and crafting.

And the result is that I have a half-finished project and a ton of crap.

This sickness--because sometimes I think that it is--has another facet. I try to organize as a way to magically make all of these projects and ideas come to fruition. "I could get all my bills and correspondence together if I have this nifty new filing cabinet which has labels slightly different from the three other filing cabinets I own." "If I got this family organizer, Himself and I could always keep track of our work and social schedules and impending chores and errands, because, let's face it, the two planners and two calendars that I already have don't quite cut it." "If I can just get organized, everything will fall into place." (My middle sister does the same thing. I'd say it's a family trait, but our eldest sister somehow managed to dodge this particular strain of neuroses).

And the really pathetic thing to all of this (as if it weren't lame enough already) is that I KNOW THINGS WON'T CHANGE with that handy-dandy, ultra-sleek new organizing ____________. I know this. It's common sense--when getting things together, the secret is not getting new/more/better organizational objects, but rather throwing shit out. Downsizing, minimizing, reducing, reusing, call it whatever you want. The current trend in organization is is about buying less, having less, using less. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

But where's the fun in that?

This is not a novel concept. I know all of this, but still I do it. I reminded myself of it the other day when I purchased a drawer organizer, two storage bins, and a scrapbook paper file. I will remind myself of that later today when I go back to Target and get another scrapbook paper file and a little table for my altar and maybe another one or two of those storage bins. I will remind myself of it as I continue on to Office Depot to get the stadium file organizer I realized I just had to have. I know all of this, but still I do it. But I sure as heck don't feel great about it.

In fact--spur of the moment--I am committing to you, dear readers (okay, reader) that I am nixing the spiffy new file. At least for now. I'm going to go into that danged Crap Room and find something that I already have to organize the paperwork I shouldn't have anyway.

But I'm still going to Target.