A couple weeks ago, in the grip of a To-Do List obsession I will happily discuss in tedious detail, I ordered Getting Thigns Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen, which sort of reads like a how-to manual for OCD. Having a bit of an OCD thing going on myself, I was astounded to discover that Allen thought up all kinds of compulsions I just don't have the imagination to consider.
One of the strategies he suggests involves doing a "mind sweep," in which a person writes down every single thing they can possibly think of in terms of "to-do" items. He even supplies four pages (in small type) of "Incompletion Triggers" in case you may have forgotten anything. In the process of making your list, you're directed to consider your desk drawers, countertops, floors, walls, shelves, equipment, furniture, and fixtures. I kid you not. The super-crazy part: after gathering everything from said drawers, countertops, floors, walls, shelves, equipement, furniture, and fixtures (the last three throw me for a loop, but nevermind), you're to process it all, i.e. sort and file, quite as if this can be accomplished in, oh, four hours.
In spite--or perhaps because of--the obvious insanity of this proposal, I found myself curiously drawn to the book, and wanted I'd see if I could apply Allen's principles to my Quest. In my version of the "mind sweep," I did a room-by-room audit of all the things I still have left to organize. As it turns out, I got discoraged about half-way through the inventory and dropped the list in favor of speed Solitaire, which was much more entertaining and did not threaten any notions of accomplishment I may have entertained upon recently clearing the condo of much of its clutter. It turns out that I still have much, much farther to go than I'd imagined before I can realize my goal of every box, every shelf, and every cabinet being assessed and organized. Below is my list:
Clothing Rods: 2
Photo Boxes: 5
Baskets: 8
File Drawers: 11
Drawers: 12
Cabinets: 14
Shelves in Book Shelves: 26
Boxes: 81
Shelves: 133 (Yes! Really!)