Shredding Addiction

I was so very productive yesterday. Not only did I write twenty pages, but I shredded about three shoeboxes worth of stuff and cleared/sorted all the papers from the bar in my living room, where the mail goes to die. And I did more book purging. Plus started clearing out old magazines from the rack by my sofa.

This decluttering thing is kind of addictive. I find myself saying, "Just one more thing!" And I may have to stop writing in the "library" for a while because I'll catch myself studying the bookcases to see which books I can get rid of. It's very distracting. Then every time I pass the shredder, I can't help but stop and run a few things through it, then that becomes "just one more." I ended up eating lunch nearly an hour late today because I got sidetracked by the shredder on the way to the kitchen.

I'm not sure anyone but me would notice a difference in the house, but I can tell the difference, and I feel physically lighter (though that doesn't seem to work for making that old pair of pants I tried on last night fit better). Today's target was the dining table. It wasn't bad, just a repository for things that didn't make it all the way to the kitchen, and now it will be nice and clear for breakfast Saturday morning.

Next week, I'll tackle the desk. I do still have filing to do, but I'm finding that getting rid of the stuff I don't need makes me more motivated to organize everything else.

The trick will be to develop some processes and new habits to keep things under control.

I'm also seeing that this mindset is spilling over into other areas of my life, like my procrastination tendencies. Even though I wanted to put it off (and I don't even know why I wanted to put it off, I just didn't want to deal with it), I forced myself to make my Worldcon hotel reservation the day reservations opened, and it turns out that the hotel I wanted sold out the next day, so just doing it paid off. I still need to work on that procrastination thing because I have a bad habit of putting off even things I want to do, that I know I'll need to do, sooner or later, and where there's a definite benefit to just doing it and a definite downside to waiting. But I think that's a separate issue from the decluttering.

On tap for the weekend: I think I'll create my own "Sci fi Friday" by watching last week's Primeval OnDemand, then Roger Ebert's new movie show starts on PBS tonight. Imagine, a movie show that's about the movies and not about the celebrities. After that, a writing blitz. Tomorrow night I've got a party to go to, and then Sunday night there's another episode of Downton Abbey, which is utterly addictive. And probably some shredding or magazine sorting, because I can't seem to help myself.