Further Still

The organizing aphrorism, a place for everything and everything in its place, confounds me. Of course, all my material posessions can only be in one place at a time (physicists and magicians are more than welcome to prove me wrong). But what should that place be? Conventional placement seems lacking. The best place for everything as far as I'm concerned is within a two foot radius of the head of my bed.
Unlike some people, I am even having trouble accepting the whole books go in the bookshelves concept. Yes, I work in a library. Maybe it's because I never got that library science masters degree. I'm trying to get all the books and media on the shelves. Honest I am. It's just that I don't read next to the shelf. (Someone made a related point at a staff meeting yesterday.) The shelves, which are part of a wall, are so far away from my bed. (Look for beds in the stacks next fall.)

I have given up the frat boy housekeeping aesthetic, I swear. How can I, a grown woman, accept such clutter? It's bad feng shui, the sign of an unquiet mind, etc. When my Mom came to visit, she couldn't relax in my room for the tiny bits of clutter that I just couldn't see, even after I'd spent a day trying to tidy up. She kept trying to clean up even more and there was no stopping her. To her, there was no reason to live as I did, "unless you're sick or something." "I'm not sick," I replied. "I'm just untidy." She kept tidying until I had to leave the room. When I came back a half hour later, she was throwing things into the wastebasket. She had no business throwing away my sharpie on acetate drawing of a ginger root just because it was on the floor in the corner behind the radiator! I left again. Why couldn't she just love my room --and the drawing that never became the silk screen print it was intended to be-- the way it was?