Little Small Mountain

As I'm packing up my life in Chicago and heading down to Georgia for the summer, I can't help but notice all the little things that color my world - the random pile of business cards I feel I should keep, but of people I probably won't ever contact; the endless piles of pens and little pieces of paper with important scribbles; "the odd collection" - an assortment of random things people have given me out of the blue, like a wooden flute that an American-Indian once gave me at a bar in my hometown, and the list goes on.

I want to know where this stuff goes. When people look at my house, my room, I'm sure they see it as a mess. It's an organized mess, and when I leave well enough alone, I can usually tell you exactly where that small collection of bobby pins has been growing, under the lamp, next to the half-empty packet of gum and my digital camera. But this stuff, this small stuff that clutters my life, I just don't know what to do with. I want to throw it away, but then I feel I'll end up needing it, so I stick it in a drawer that grows more unruly with each passing month until I'm not sure what it was I originally stuck in there.

I can file my bills. I can file my story ideas. I can file my stories, and cards, and appliance manuals, but how do I file that one magazine with the really cool article, or the extra batteries, the mini flashlight, or old notebook with important information that I know I'll need from time to time but don't actually need in my day to day life?

I'll say this - as frustrating, and daunting, and overwhelming, and downright maddening as this whole process has been; sorting, packing, un-packing and re-packing, giving away, storing, and setting-aside-to-take-with-me, I can't deny that it's also been good.

I hate clutter, I always have, it's the piles of little things that sit and grow, day after day, that eventually choke you. And, because of that, I'm sometimes ruthless about sorting through my things and tossing/giving them away. But like the weeds that pester the garden in the summer, those little clutter piles slink back in, unnoticed until they're a problem once again.