Hi, James!  Awhile ago you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

AH>  In my experience a lot of "junque" (stuff which is
AH>  too good to throw out, but which I don't quite know
AH>  what to do with) is easier to discard after a period
AH>  of time has elapsed.

JB>  Maybe I was foreshadowing this message but the day
JB>  it arrived, I was vacuuming my front room for the
JB>  first time in a long time. I had to shuffle the deck
JB>  a bit to do so. 


          I can relate.  We meant to shampoo the carpet while Nora was in
Sunny Hill, but she got discharged two months earlier than we'd expected. 
The upside is that our daughter seems to be carrying on the fine family
tradition of being an Exceptional Patient (a term coined by Bernie
Siegel)... the downside is that with the addition of OT/PT equipment there
is more stuff to be moved now.  :-))



AH>  I guess things got away on you when a rough patch in
AH>  your life made it imperative to find a reason to get
AH>  out of bed.  I won't say "in the morning" because I
AH>  know you're a musician, and I'm a night person too!

JB>  Ya... I don't know what I am going to use for motivation
JB>  when the cat is no longer pestering me to go outside.


          Get another cat?  I understand that pets... especially the warm
furry kind... contribute a lot toward human health.  :-)



JB>  I'm banking on a decade to sorting. 


          Well... it could easily take me that long.  IIRC, you became
disabled about fifteen years ago & various things had to go on the back
burner while you were dealing with other issues.  They probably won't go
away in much less time. My mother was no Susie Housekeeper either.  I
realized when we had to clean out her place that she didn't finish her
attempts to sort physical objects... but I remember that she always found
time to listen when I needed to talk, and I know others appreciated it as
well.  If I must choose I'd rather be remembered as an Exceptional Parent. 
How many people do you know, for example, who read bedtime stories like WAR
AND PEACE to their young adult offspring??  I enjoy it, and so does she. 
There's where I feel I can make a difference.  When I'm dead & gone,
some SJ will have a great time throwing out what I never got around to.... 
;-)



JB>  Sadly, I use a new piece of equipment, furniture, or
JB>  flooring material to motivate me to clear out a space
JB>  for it.


          Nature abhors a vacuum.  Whenever I tidy a cupboard & discard
several items, the remaining items seem to take up more space.  Whenever I
discard some junk mail, more arrives shortly thereafter.  Arghh!  If you
know what motivates you I reckon that's a very important insight.  I admit
I keep too much stuff... but I feel vindicated when Nora's rehab aide (who
is younger than either you or me & who probably thinks I'm insane) says
"Ardith, do you have a flour sifter?" in the middle of a cooking
project & I produce three within minutes.  I suppose I'm doing much the
same thing you're doing when my pet charity calls to tell me they're
planning to send a truck to our area in the near future.  I tell them I
have something for them because I'll have to produce something within a
limited time & I'm forced to use the "adrenaline pathway"...
i.e. the preferred mode of reasoning for the 75% of the population who are
extroverts.  I can't sustain it for very long, though, because it requires
much more effort for an introvert to think that way.  When you acquire
something new which you're looking forward to working on, and you must find
storage space for it where it won't be exposed to the weather, you're
evoking a similar response.  Reading between the lines... I think you know
adrenaline can be addictive, and you don't want to get hooked on acquiring
even more stuff as a way of forcing yourself to clear the decks.  :-)



JB>  I've never suffered with not having a "plan of attack".
JB>  Now I need to find ever-more creative ways to attack
JB>  the plan.


          In other words... if anybody has a bright idea about how to deal
with this stuff, you've probably heard it before!  I could easily go into
most other people's houses, select a few choice items, and be quite
ruthless with whatever else I found there.  With regard to things like the
clock which was given to my parents as a wedding present and/or the
flooring you'd intended to use when you built your dream home, there's
emotional baggage to be dealt with too.  I'm not sure what can
realistically be done, apart from what we are already doing.  :-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+