Clutter

I'd made a date with Bee to rock up at hers one Saturday morning to take a stab at de-cluttering and organising her garage.  I arrived on time but as soon as she opened the door to me, she didn't look good, she's been suffering more than normal with her ears since January.  Middle ear infection is starting to get under control but she hadn't had a good night. 

I told her if she didn't feel up to it, it was fine, we could reschedule but she'd obviously geared herself up for it, had written on white rubbish bags with a black marker 'paper', 'rubbish', 'plastic' etc. so we jumped in for 95 minutes until the heavens opened and we had to scramble to get everything we'd taken out of the garage back in under cover. 

This was probably pretty good timing, even though I was doing all the lifting and carrying, Bee still had to bend down and move around and with an ear infection, it's not the best is it?  Anyway, she did well, she let go of more stuff than I expected, the items that I would have kept hold of over other stuff (like plastic plant pots) she wanted to get rid of, so I let her.  I uncovered a Pifco hairdryer from the 60's... in it's box, a cylinder hoover from the 70's, Pomagne with 1974 on it and a bottle of white wine stamped 1986.  Anyway, in an hour and a bit, we had a car full of rubbish to go to the tip, which is pretty good going.  Rain stopped play but I'll go over again, my main aim is to get her organised, at the moment, she has a narrow pathway to just about get through sideways and I'm worried she may fall or bang into something.

The following weekend I call in for a coffee, weather is terrible so no sorting, and I casually ask if she's been to the tip yet with the rubbish from the clear out, fully expecting a 'no, not yet'.  Instead, I get a 'yes' followed by; 'and on Tuesday I spent three hours in the garage sorting out....'  It's a good job I was sitting down.  Who is this person?  She tells me in minute detail what she looked at, where it was and what she decided to do with it.  Can't tell you how proud of her I was, and I told her so.  Three hours sorting on her own is a huge achievement after more than a decade of procrastination. I feel like I flipped a little switch and gave her something resembling motivation.

I've promised more time, as much as it takes to get her organised.  Hopefully the weather will pick up soon and even if it doesn't, I have a week off in June so we should be able to find at least one dry day to have another bash at it rather than hope for some weekend sunshine, or at least a day free of rain.

You know that I'm not a naturally tidy person but the more I sort and organise, the more I want to sort and organise, and I feel so much lighter.  Never in a million years did I believe that I would be like this.  It's taken a very long time but I'm getting there.