Lost in the clutter

My inability to stay organized leads me to visit an imaginary therapist

In terms of cleaning up after a job, my father’s fiberglass-encased paintbrush, circa 1996, suggests my problem might be genetic.

MAYBE IT WAS when a 12-year-old grandson, holding my new iPhone, said, “Bob-Bob, why do you have 47,009 unread email messages?” Or when he pointed out I have 36,403 photos in my MacBook Air’s Photos app. Or when a son, checking out our new kittens in my office, referred to my well-cluttered digs as “controlled chaos” — easy on the “controlled.”

At some point in recent weeks, I’ve been reminded that maintenance is not my thing — and clutter is. So, naturally, I imagined a sit-down with a therapist.

“Bob,” she says, “we all have skeletons in our closets. Couldn’t you be overstating this alleged sinking into slovenly despair?”

The difference between others and me is that if they have such skeletons, they can actually find them. I have no idea where my skeletons are, because they’re buried in the clutter. Hey, I’m lucky to even find the closet.

It’s more than just not deleting emails and photos. To even find a couple of sheets of notes for today’s column, I had to sift through a stack of stuff that included a 2015 letter from a Penn State professor regarding American Nightingale, a reservation for last December’s holiday lights show at Shore Acres State Park and three oversized golf shirts I bought online and haven’t gotten around to returning.

Pruning my emails and text messages has never been my strong suit.

“So, Bob, why come to me? Why not just soldier on, alone?”

Absolution, I suppose. I was raised in the Episcopal church. I remember, as a boy, praying a line from the General Confession of the Book of Common Prayer: “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done … .” Hey, I leave stuff ‘left undone’ every day. I am a serial leaver of undone things.

I should delete this email. I should throw out that note. But I don’t. I can’t. Years ago, a daughter-in-law — a well-organized daughter-in-law — physically recoiled when seeing how many files I had on my MacBook Air’s desktop — more than 200. The scene looked like an aerial shot of Coney Island beach blankets on the Fourth of July.

And before you know it, I’m looking for an EWEB bill I must extract from beneath earthquake-like rubble that includes a hand-crafted star given to She Who and me by a girl in the Czech Republic in 2017 and a Phil Knight bobblehead doll so old Sally had made a Covid mask for it.

This area is loosely for books I have written, but my organizational bouncers have done a poor job of limiting entry to just that. I do like the German flag, however, hung in honor of Fritz Engelbert, co-star of Saving My Enemy. My American flag was re-purposed — where, I have no idea.

“OK, let’s assume you are guilty as self-charged. Where do you think this might have begun?”