When it comes to organizing, I often stop just short of my goal. This fall when I wrote about this phenomenon, I called it the "10 yards left to go" syndrome, but with football season now behind us, I'd just as soon get literary and call it the Amarata Complex, named after the character in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel, 100 Years of Solitude. Amarata is visited by an angel who advises her to sew a funeral shroud for herself, the more elaborate the better, because once she's done with it she'll die. I can think of no better explanation as to why I'll spend a good 10 hours cleaning and organizing a room, only to overlook, ignore, side-step, neglect, forget, or otherwise blow-off doing the last little bit so that the room looks and feels "done." Because you just know that once the last box of papers is shredded or filed, or once the last shelf in the kitchen is completely organized, God Himself is going to swoop down and say, "Well, shoot. Obviously your work here on earth is done." And just like Amarata, you'll be pushing up daisies in no time.
This thus explains why I spent hours upon hours this fall organizing my study and even the craft closet in it, yet there are still collapsing piles of art supplies around, under, and yes, behind my desk. My chrome shelving units are in a state of utter disgrace, and I've dumped, consciously or not, a mystifying stack of boxes, bags, and sundry supplies smack in the middle of my Fame and Reputation center according to Feng Shui. Other examples of areas left un-done include the little aisle-way of debris that has collected by the bed and an enormous empty corrugated box that has been in the living room since June for no other reason than that the kittens enjoy playing with it. Obviously, I need some kind of organization intervention.
So that's what we're looking at this week--tackling the bits and pieces of projects, the last hour or so in a room or area, the final push before the optional finishing touches--that you know you have to do before you can say: okay, this is done. Because if you're like me, it's time to cross a thing or two off your list and move on.