There’s a long, narrow pantry off my kitchen. I thought about posting a picture, but I’m afraid that making its state public would get me carted off to one of those hoarder intervention shows on cable TV. I don’t really know the full extent of my hoardiness (that word being spelled carefully) because said panty comes complete with a sturdy door. Out of sight, out of mind.
Unfortunately, the closed-door approach that has served me for over twenty years has become difficult. In the process of purging an even longer span of classroom detritus, I wound up with a take-home pile of a dozenish boxes (mostly the kind that Lowe’s sells for 88 cents; I’ve long since discovered that it’s easier to buy boxes than to scavenge) in my living room:
The contents of some of those boxes (which I don’t need and probably shouldn’t have brought home in the first place) are going to have to go in the closed-door panty. The pantry is full. So, I find myself at an I-need-to-get-rid-of-stuff-before-I-can-store-more-stuff crossroad. It’s a lot like having to empty the dishwasher before I can wash more dishes. I don’t like emptying the dishwasher (that plastic stuff never dries, darn it) and I really don’t like cleaning pantries with decades of accumulation. And people ask me how I’m enjoying retirement so far.
I found myself wandering from living-room pile to pantry door, hoping that I could come up with a more pressing project to facilitate procrastination. And genius struck. “I really need to add an entry to my blog,” I said to myself. Self smiled with relief.
Nevermind that I haven’t updated the old blog in nearly four years. This is urgent writing going on. I’ll get to those boxes. Someday.
Rounding the Square 