It’s not so much a post about the vagaries of housecleaning, which are rather dull, but instead the nature of the beast, which I envision as a shell-within-a-shell sisyphisian trudge. I have a plan, this plan goes hand-in-hand with my personal will towards simplification and forcing my house to bend to my designs. It is made of steps that have to be dealt with in a certain order for everything to make sense. You have to start somewhere and you need to cut out before you can reorganize.

Step 1: The Grace of Goodwill and/or the Salvation Army – This step is one of the biggest, but not the absolute biggest hurdles to my year-long plan for home order. The plan is to separate Fall/Winter wardrobes from Spring/Summer wardrobes and while selecting for that, also pitching clothes that no longer fit or are so surplus that I haven’t even thought of them in a year or more. This involves the purgation of all of our closets, which for a pair of gay men is as legendary as you imagine. There are 4 closet areas, the Walkin, Hobbiton, Hallway and Guest. All four have to be emptied and sorted, a pile heading to the charities and then the sorting of their seasonal appropriateness. The not-seasonal-now clothes will all eventually be stored in Hobbiton, as it is the largest closet I have ever seen in my life. Once the clothing is ordered properly we’ll have a clear bead on how much of Hobbiton was consumed and how much remains for secondary storage. Hobbiton is THAT BIG, and frankly speaking, I’ve never really looked very closely inside Hobbiton, so I imagine there are surprises lurking within, mayhap, even Hobbits.

Step 2: Organizing the Man Cave – Two gay men, a fully finished basement, and more electronics and gadgets than you can shake a stick at. This zone must be organized. DVD’s have to be sorted into alphabetical order and music has to be sorted into alphabetical order. The only variance to the sorting is the special thematic category of Horror/Thriller/Halloween movies, they will be on their own, sorted but segregated since they are the gory delight of every Samhain/Halloween celebration. The splatter must stand alone. 🙂 The music really ought to be digitized and the physical media obliterated, but that would be more trouble than it’s worth in the end.

Step 3: Organizing THE LIBRARY – I use all caps because the old master bedroom became THE LIBRARY. It’s where all our books are stored. Anyone who even is partially aware of Scott knows that his affection for books is beyond epic, beyond legend, it’s incredible. We don’t honor our Library nearly enough as we ought to and for this plan I can address some of it by alpha-sorting the entire structure. I need to dig deep into that room and purge off very old castaway technology and pitch much of what is my personal storage in that room. I haven’t seen it in a year, almost all of it, so keeping it is doing nothing for me, it has to go. The only thing that stays are the books, but for me personally, there are some books that will be landfill bound. Before we can address the Library we have to get our current lodger up and flying, so he can get his independence. Once that is done, the work on this room can commence.

In the end, of all these steps, our house will be more orderly and pleasant and I won’t have to feel awkward and bent about all these little nipping irritants, not being able to find the right clothes, the right movies, the right music or the right books to suit me. Also it would be nice to have a home again where I can sit where I please and do what I wish without having to contend with piles of drift-stuff that ended up malingering in corners. UP AND OUT. That’s the theme.

When will this grand plan be achieved? Maybe a year from now, maybe two. This simplification is vital and I can’t resist it any longer. All of this STUFF is stifling. When people mention this stuff, they sometimes use the word ‘trappings’ and that’s exactly what it is, stuff-based traps. I’m done with traps. Time to be simple.