Piles

In my home, where order normally reigns supreme, I have noticed changes of late. At first it was a subtle change. Just sort of caught my eye but didn’t rock me.

I had just finished the dinner dishes. All the leftover food had been covered and put away. I took a clean sponge and began to wash the long kitchen counter. From the one end to the other end I worked to clean with satisfaction. I knew that when I got to other end of that counter, I would be done and I could go sit down and read or take a bath or even sleep. I drew a breath of closure with that last swipe only to encounter… “it.” A small pile of mail (maybe two days worth) that no one wanted to address.

“Oh, Man! I’m too tired for this,” I think to myself. I rinsed the sponge and put it next to the sink. Then I began to review the little pile of paper.
*Several ads
*Two bills not due for a couple of weeks
*More ads
*A magazine
*A card from my cousin
*Bank solicitations
* Two more ads
When everything was at least sorted and the bills were placed on a desk, I gave myself permission to leave for the bedroom.

So now I’m ready for bed and have my cup of tea. I am sitting down to read. I happen to drop the bookmark and as I am picking it up, it appears to me that my little friend from the kitchen counter has re located himself next to my chair. “How is the possible,” I say to myself. My book goes to the side of me in the chair, as my lap is now covered with yet another pile of stuff to sort and eliminate.
*Two books I have borrowed and finished reading
*Seventeen birthday cards from last month
*A tea bag that has yet to be used
*A ballpoint pen
*Four letters that I have yet to answer
*Some family photographs that have no home
*Three errant envelops
*A book of stamps
*Two magazines

Finished sorting. It is now too late to read. I must get to sleep, and my lap is full of what will be kept and dealt with tomorrow morning, while my hands are full of what will be tossed out tonight. Things are thrown away and things are kept and I go to sleep, believing that all is well. But it is not.

The following morning, I rise to find a fresh pile of “stuff” on the kitchen counter. I roll my eyes and retreat to my bedroom where as I am about to climb back into bed and hide from the kitchen pile, I see the things to be saved from last night’s bedroom pile in my chair, still waiting my attention.

What to do? And yes, I took the bedroom pile out to the one Hubby had made last night on the kitchen counter while I was madly sorting in the bedroom! I couldn’t take it, plus I was cranky. So the best place for me to put this frustration was back in bed. I ended up sleeping another two hours. After all it was Sunday! I needed the rest. And while I slept, Hubby decided to clean his office. He had a few things he thought we should save, so he brought them to the kitchen counter… “Oh no,” he thinks to himself. “She sorted last night. I can’t put this stuff there… ” So he makes a completely new pile of his gee-we-really-need this-stuff and places it neatly in an entirely new pile next to the one he now calls “mine.”

Sigh. Yes, SIGH! I got up feeling refreshed and saw not one but two piles and here comes Hubby with a few more things for that pile. “Oh, she doesn’t look happy. Maybe I should start a new pile,” he thinks to himself. AND HE DOES! Right there in front of me.

I take you to three days later. I have tried to allow Hubby time to deal with the two piles that he has created. I don’t want to add anything of mine to the kitchen counter because that might distract him from the fact that he owned his mess. So now I (who, as they say, lives in a glass house and cannot throw stones) have created two additional piles on the floor next to my computer… and this does not count the one on my desk that grows by the minute, as if it is a cancer with a life of its own!

Piles! If Hubby and I should be left alone for any length of time in this house and die, it would be assumed that suffocated from the piles that multiply eve as I write to you!

I tried to recall if I ever saw piles lying about in my parents’ home. No, I did not. And was this a problem when I was a single woman living alone, and no it was not. Can I blame this on Hubby, and no I cannot, as I have most certainly contributed to this horrendous mess.

I don’t believe that my parents were ever blessed with the amount of junk mail that I experience. And I think that, as a writer, I seem to need piles to stay organized with all that I write… articles, projects, blogs! When I was a single woman, it was music that lay about and music is much easier to organize than the many writing projects, which are mine. And, there is this: I needed to be neat as I was raising the four bros, it was necessary to set an example. Children learn much more from what they see their parents do, than they learn from any orders, lectures, or pampering they get. That said, no children live here anymore… They just come to visit all through the day. And their remarks? “Mrs. Temple, I feel so comfortable in your house… it looks like my room!” And believe me when I say this is probably not good news.

Piles! Today as I reclined in my bed with a little twenty-four hour flu bug, I sorted through three more piles. It was good to have this done, but like all the rest, they didn’t really go away. They just looked like they lost weight, as they became one pile. It is time to find life sans piles in a new and remarkable way. And that way would be to have less. Less of everything.

This past Saturday, I spent the day feeding people who have nothing but the clothes on their back and their dignity. I have no doubt that they would find my issue with piles meaningless and self-centered. Even as I write I can recall the eyes of these men, women, and children. The pleasure it was to them to simply have food!

In preparation, I allowed myself to go into this experience having had nothing to eat. That morning, as I smelled the aroma of meat cooking on an open fire, my stomach rolled and rumbled in want. Volunteers, follow this simple rule of thumb is, “They eat while we don’t.” How ironic to recall that on that day, I was hungry for the first time in a really long while, and they were being fed in the same context.

Tomorrow I begin a new journey. I intend to have less of everything. Perhaps as I pair down my big house full of belongings and give them away, I will find a new life that is simpler and easier to handle with less piles.

May your life also be simpler, with no piles at all!

Best… Carolyn Thomas Temple