Have you ever had goat trails? I’ve seen them in the hoarding TV shows. People with massive, excessive amounts of clutter are forced to make trails through it so they can get through their homes.
The first time I saw such a thing I was in someone else’s home. I don’t know who the man was, and met him only that one time. I can’t even remember why I was there. This fuzzy memory is telling me that an acquaintance took me to visit him. He was not wildly enthusiastic about my presence in his mess. Really, his clutter problem was minimal compared to some of the messes I’ve seen on TV. He had about fifty piles of clutter, each being about two to three feet tall, and they were in most of his living room and dining room – with a trail for us to walk through.
I asked him if he’d like to have some help organizing his home, and he sternly said, “I’ve got it just how I like it.” Oh wow… I think that probably shut me up efficiently!
Now, I’ve always been a clutter-prone person, but I’ve never gotten to that particular point with piles of organized clutter. At least, I think he thought the piles were well organized! I did at one time have a collection of clutter boxes large enough to fill a room. However, I always tried to keep them out of our living area, and after many years of work, work, work, I’ve pared down my clutter so there’s less than what would fit in one closet. That doesn’t mean my home, which is a cabin in the mountains, is totally clean and organized! I’m still the clutter-prone me that I’ve always been. However… it does mean that I’ve managed to get rid of most of the junk that I’d been holding onto. I thank God for the hospice thrift shop in a nearby city that has taken in most of my excess stuff! I always give to the thrift shop rather than try to have yard sales. It is fast, efficient, and less frustrating!
Even though I’ve managed to control my clutter I recently got the impression of having goat trails in my bedroom. You see, right now this is the only room in my house that I use a lot. I sleep in here, of course, and on one side of the bed I have my tiny home office set up – I’m into online marketing. Kinda strange that I feel I need to work in here, since another room in my house is the official home office, but as of last October I decided I’d rather move my laptop to a corner of my bedroom and use a little wooden TV table as a desk.
The other side of my bedroom is set up as a dual-purpose area, I guess you could say. I have my personal grooming items there, plus my art studio! Now, mind you, I have a spare room that I’d love to have a large art studio in, but my life partner uses that for storage and has ignored my requests to make it into an art studio for the two of us. So picture this: I have a huge queen sized bed in the middle of the room, and a home office on one side, and an art studio on the other side, and it seems a bit crammed in, if you know what I mean! There’s barely enough room to walk around the bed. I guess this is adequate for one person, but I’d love to expand a bit. Sorry to say it probably isn’t going to happen right away.
The one thing I can do to make this room livable is to keep it uncluttered (meaning rid myself of excess stuff and useless papers) and keep the rug vacuumed for a cleaner “feel” to the place. Goat trails are out; cleanliness is in! One way to do this is to take a day each week to organize the room I spend most of my time in. Yes, I work at home, on one side of the bed or the other, and organization is essential to my mental well-being.
Have a happy day!
