Pariah Burke Consulting & Training with Creative & Publishing Workflow Expert Pariah S. Burke | Informing & Empowering Creative Professionals™

As of today, Strawberry Blonde and I have lived together for two weeks. Other than minor adjust­ments to our rou­tines, things have been going very well. The only real stum­bling block is my stuff.

When I move–Chris can attest to this–people are amazed by how much stuff I have. Invariably the mass of boxes inspires some­one to accuse me of not pack­ing prop­erly, of wast­ing space. The truth is actu­ally to the con­trary: I am an excel­lent orga­nizer (thanks, Mom!). I use space effec­tively. I’ll admit to a lit­tle pride in my abil­ity to orga­nize and arrange a home that holds quite a lot of stuff with­out look­ing clut­tered. I fear, though, that I may have met my match here.

I’ve lived with oth­ers and always been able to inte­grate their stuff with my own in a taste­fully dec­o­rated, unclut­tered home. I hope we can do that this time. I have so many boxes of so much stuff…

There are boxes in every room. I can’t find half the things for which I go look­ing. The rea­sons vary: some par­tially unpacked boxes have been con­sol­i­dated; the movers were tired and put things wher­ever they felt like stop­ping, and; boxes keep get­ting shuf­fled about and rearranged because pre­req­ui­site orga­ni­za­tion for one thing or another hasn’t yet been accom­plished. So much is pred­i­cated on so many other things, like a string of domi­noes. We can’t empty these boxes of break­able knick­nacks until the shelves are cleared of uncon­nected stereo and video com­po­nents. The stereo and video com­po­nents can’t be put in their places until the fur­ni­ture is moved. The fur­ni­ture can’t be moved until the old cre­denza is emp­tied and moved out. It can’t be emp­tied and moved out until other things are moved from the places into which the cre­denza con­tents will go. It goes on from there, inter­con­nect­ing every half-unpacked room in the house.

Some days the state of every­thing really wears on us. Strawberry Blonde feels she can’t make full use of any room. Squeezing past this or that to go here or there, I feel penned in by boxes and out-of-place fur­ni­ture. The girls want to use the new fam­ily room we’ve just set up (but which is our pri­mary stag­ing area for stuff), they want my toy­box acces­si­ble, or they want the XBox or PS2 hooked up.

Prior to mov­ing I dis­carded a lot of stuff, as did Strawberry Blonde. Still, try­ing to inte­grate our stuff into a uni­fied home–just try­ing to make it all fit–is prov­ing dif­fi­cult. The ever present boxes and half-arranged rooms is grind­ing on our nerves.

I hope we get it all put together before christmas.