Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Sock Drawer

I’ve been attempting to declutter this weekend. I am not one of those creatives who are happy in their chaos, I am no Francis Bacon. Neither am I a writer who uses a sophisticated app to map their ideas and plot arcs and has neatly folded socks. Quickly scribbled post-its and recycled envelopes mix with receipts and stray socks. When I was an undergraduate student, we used to joke that if you cleaned downstairs you were cleaning your conscious mind and if you cleaned your bedroom you were cleaning your unconscious mind. Both these jobs were only ever embarked on when there were assignments to be written. Now, with my final MA piece looming I find myself obsessed with the mess I have cocooned myself in. 

We usually use moving house to sort through our stuff. The problem is we’ve lived in this place for eleven years now. The problem is it has no storage space; it’s very difficult to keep a home beautiful if you can’t hide your vacuum cleaner. The problem is I’m missing the home-making gene; I’m incredibly undomesticated and slovenly. The problem is I can’t come up with any more excuses.

A good friend used the last bank holiday weekend to go through all her possessions after reading a book on how to organise one’s material world. I think it would take me a month or maybe a year. I have read some sensible advice online. One idea was to get rid of an item a day. I might be able to manage this. Another was to do a five minute task a day. Most of the activities it listed would take me longer than five minutes (Well, I was on the slow eaters’ table at school; I like to take my time) but they are relatively bite size. Not too terrifying. Possibly this is a longer term project, like the MA piece; not to be knocked out in a bank holiday weekend.

I started with my sock drawer.