Tidy Desk - Tidy Mind

I am a bit alarmed that I may have a case of Bloggers Block. I simply can't find anything useful to write about. I've been busy lately, met lots of people and done lots of things but my ability to write about it all at the moment seems to have left me bereft of all literary musings.

I do notice a pattern with this. A pattern I've lived with since childhood. My state of mind is in symbiosis to my surroundings. If everywhere around me is a mess - I'm a mess. For me, visual order = mental order.

The house is a mess. The children are home from school. I can't expect them to keep it tidy, but I do have trouble coping with keeping an even keel when I'm tripping over lego bricks, stepping over hospital beds made up on the sofa with duvets and pillows and picking up bits of play-dough pancake from the kitchen floor.

I need a retreat.

The retreat is my study. Usually a nice, organised, orderly adult area. I relate to the tidy desk, tidy mind theory. This morning it looked like this. Not only did the desk look like a car had crashed into it, but the entire room.

I feared my head might just cave in at this point.


But cleaning for me is not a swift task. I'm not a tidy up, shove it in one corner, wipe a duster over it kind of woman. It's deep clean or nothing.

And this deep clean took me 3 hours.

But amongst the piles of papers I found the children's school reports and whilst talking to an old friend on the phone found myself comparing notes and exchanging well dones as she read off the reports for her children. I found receipts that needed to be spiked for when I do the household accounts each week, scraps of paper with e-mail addresses for Joshua's friends that he claims to have lost, photographs of me as a toddler and my own school reports.

So, not only did a good clear-up of my study make me feel better in that it left me a virtual zone of peace and tranquility, it also brought back memories of old.

But I'm happier now. My zone is clear, my retreat is mine again and try as I might to make promises never to let it clutter up again, I know it will end up the same in about a month and then the whole process will start again.

Why It Takes Two Hours To Cook Dinner

Because it's hard not to get involved when the children are playing with paints.


Muuuum, I need some more paper.

Mummm, my water's gone all black, can you change it?

Mummmm, Sam's put his hands in the paint and he's making a mess.



Mummmmm, it's not fair, Maddie's got the thin paintbrush and she's had it for ages.


Backwards and forwards, fill water pots, replenish paper stocks, refresh paint palettes, supervise Sam with painted hands, referee over paint brushes.....

Stop to admire artwork.


Somehow in the midst of it, try to put something together for dinner.

Don't you just love it when the children come home...

and your kitchen looks like the local landfill?

And don't you just love it when the children go to bed.... so you can tidy it up and make it look suitable for humans again?

Yeah? Me too.

The laundrette

Gretchen posted recently about her laundry achievement.

Spookily enough, I did the very same thing on Friday whilst home nursing a damaged toe tendon.

Only, I realise now why I let the ironing pile up. You see, when I've done all the laundry, hung, dried, ironed and put away, I find out I don't actually have enough storage space for all the clothes.

I've rammed stuff in drawers so hard I fear I may never open them again.

'Ah, but why oh why do you have all those clothes Karen, if you can't store them?' I hear you ask.

Because most of them have been given to me by friends and bought for the children by family members and as a huge fan of recycling and reusing I just can't say no - especially as I need such vast quantities to take on camping trips as I refuse to use the communal washing machines - one never know what nasties are lurking in the drums!

I think I should just be a slob and let it pile up. But I can't. The type A in me makes me face up tins in my larder - let the laundry pile up - oh no, I couldn't cope with that. Maybe I should live by my mantra and sort them out too and pass a few on to the charity shop.

But then I'm going camping again in July, so maybe I'll just carry on squishing them in.