I’M the world’s most disorganised person. I live in a state of constant chaos, playing catch-up with most aspects of life.
That’s not to say I don’t try to impose order. It’s just that I haven’t yet managed to evolve an effective system of doing so.
Basically, I’m a procrastinator. Apart from making meals, I can postpone doing practically anything indefinitely. My ‘long finger’ is the length of your arm.
But every so often my conscience pricks me and I embark upon a crusade of efficiency – only to discover that a pristine house, gleaming windows, shining surfaces and fresh flowers in the hall is a cast-iron guarantee that nobody’ll darken the door and I descend into slatternly disorder again within days.
I regret to say I didn’t inherit my mother’s ‘cleaning gene’. She’d obsessively tidy the house last thing before bedtime in case she died in the night.
All I can say is, if the worst happens, I’ll have to be waked in somebody else’s house.
My trouble is, I have few organisational skills. I start one long-postponed task and, in the course of it am distracted by something else that needs doing.
Result? Two half-done jobs. Also, I forget things. If I don’t write it down immediately, it disappears like snow off a ditch.
I spend my days in a yellow confetti of post-it notes adhering to all surfaces, which subsequently become detached or I put something down on top of them.
For example, several years in, the blue/grey alternative bin-emptying service still defeats me. Since both my bins are permanently full to overflowing, I never recall which goes out on which day.
On the evenings I set out before dark in a glow of conscious virtue to leave the bin out for collection next morning, it’s invariably the wrong one and Richard-over-the-road regularly has to trundle it back up the drive and take down the right one.
The alternative is rising at stupid o’clock, staggering down to the gate to see what colour bin the neighbours have left out, then making a second trip (usually in the rain) in my dressing-gown and no face.
Even registering something in my diary as back-up is no guarantee I’ll remember to look in it.
My personal nadir is the night I took a phone-call at 8.45 and an aggrieved female voice said: “There are 40 of us assembled here in Omagh Library for your eight o’clock talk. Where are you?”
The diary is a cryptic mess of shorthand jottings, e.g. ‘Ring M.’ Which M? I know at least five – and I’m still pondering what ‘Important – buy HWB’ might mean.
In my own defence, I do write fully comprehensive shopping lists, assemble the big supermarket carrier with smaller ones inside, check I’ve a pound coin for the trolley and set off feeling smug.
Not until I’m in the first aisle do I realise the list’s been left on the hall table and I come home without milk or butter.
Holiday preparation is a nightmare of last-minute decision-making. I resolve to launder all the ‘possibles’, but leave it rather late.
A chance-calling friend, surveying the banners of wet garments festooning the house observes tartly: “It’s not as if you didn’t know you were going.” I iron till midnight.
Come the morning, I pack my still-slightly-damp choices and obsess about shoes, toiletries and cosmetics.
So here I am, too early at the airport, wondering uneasily if I’ve remembered to switch everything off, pull all the plugs out, lock the back door and the car and comforting myself with the thought that if burglars break in, the house is in such a state of disarray they’ll think somebody’s been there before them.
Now I’m rifling feverishly through the many compartments of my useful ‘organiser’ holiday handbag and thinking an organiser bag is only as organised as its owner is competent.
Passport – check; boarding pass – check; rail tickets – check; purse – check. Omigawd! Where’s my 10x magnifying mirror without which I can’t see to put my eyes on properly? It’s on the hall table…..
