Sunday, January 25, 2004

The price of sloth

In Friday's post, I talked about how keeping your space neat and your stuff in order is better than not doing so. My advice comes from painful experience.

Over the years a combination of sloth (if you don't know what it means, look it up) and pack rat tendencies has cost me dearly - a silver chain and cross from Poland given to me by my friend P, a small crystal vase I received from my boyfriend J on my high school graduation, and my wedding photo proofs. These are just a few of my former possessions that still exist, but only God knows where.

In my family the adults participate in a grab bag at Christmas, which means that we each get one nice item from one other adult. A couple of years ago my sister-in-law CJ gave me a beautiful pair of silver-and-crystal drop earrings that I loved wearing with black and navy outfits.

Several months ago the pile on my dining table contained two weeks worth of junk mail, photos and supplies for a poster I was working on, remnants of a greeting card project, and my beautiful earrings. When I finally did clean up the mess, one earring was gone. Since the pair had been near the middle of the round table, I did not think it had fallen off the side. But I searched frantically all over the floor, knowing the whole time that the earring was long gone, most likely stuck in a newspaper which had already been taken away by the recycle truck.

My guess is that CJ invested an hour or two in those earrings - driving to the mall, shopping at one or more stores, looking through racks and cases to find just the right thing for me. But I would not take just a few seconds to walk to my bedroom and put the earrings where they belong.

Yesterday I did my housework - a smaller chore than it used to be because I do a better job of keeping things in order on a daily basis. I still check the floor around my dining table before I vacuum...just in case.

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