The Conical Glass: The fourth day of X-Mess

Sunday, December 24, 2006

The fourth day of X-Mess

Is it possible that this is only the fourth day of X-Mess? It feels like I've been cleaning for years.

In clutter lingo (parlez-vous clutter?), a "hot spot" is an area where mess accumulates very quickly. The primary hot spot in my household is the counter that divides the living room from our open kitchen. Theoretically, this would be a great place to pull up a bar stool and eat breakfast (especially if someone in the kitchen was busy making waffles and handing them over to you), but usually, you can't even see the counter because it's so covered with stuff. This is where I always throw the day's mail, figuring I'll get to it "later." Thank goodness we pay all of our bills online; otherwise, our credit rating would probably be in the toilet.

Yesterday, I decided to tackle the hot spot. I took all the piles and dragged them over to the living room couch. Considering that one of the things I found was my brokerage statement from June, it had obviously been a while since I'd worked on it.

An overwhelming amount of the stuff in the piles was various magazines and newsletters. We receive at least three different college alumni magazines, as well as member publications from AAA, our HMO, our veterinarian's office, our insurance company, Habitat for Humanity, the Human Rights Campaign, the Humane Society (national and local) and the library, as well as Nordic Reach, a glossy mag about Scandinavia which I get because I belong to my parents' Swedish-American organization in Michigan. The common denominator? I didn't ask for any of those publications; they come unbidden, day after day.

I get a relatively small amount of catalogs and bulk mail, because about a year ago, I followed all the instructions at StopJunkMail.org. It really worked -- I don't even get supermarket circulars or ValPak coupons anymore. When I receive a catalog from a company I do business with, like Lands' End or Travelsmith, I chuck it directly into the recycling bin, unless I need to buy something right that minute. There will always be another catalog on the way, plus everything is available on the companies' web sites.

Anyway, I guess I could contact all of the organizations I belong to or donate to and ask them to stop sending me the magazines, but I have to admit that I do enjoy reading the stories about rescued animals in the local humane society newsletter, and I always have to scan the alumni news pages in Johns Hopkins Magazine to see which of my classmates have become incredibly successful. (I try not to feel too inadequate, since obviously the losers never write in to inform everybody about their divorces or prolonged bouts of unemployment.) I know I need to take 10-15 minutes every day to keep my "hot spot" from turning into a full-blown raging fire, but when I'm super-busy with work, book club, theater and other activities, it's too tempting to just keep chucking things on the counter and ignoring them for months at a time.

Lessons learned: I fear I might be an incurable hot spot junkie. Maybe I need to cover the counter with spikes, the kind you see on the exterior windowsills of some downtown buildings meant to discourage homeless people from sitting on them.

posted by 125records @ 3:40 PM

2 Comments:

At 8:14 AM, neal said…

Feel lucky that you have THE hot spot, rather then A hot spot. I think in my house, all flat surfaces (including the floor) are hot spots!
At 7:58 PM, 2fs said…

There's a small life insurance policy I've had since I was a kid (my parents established it), and the insurance company in question, some years ago, started sending me its monthly magazine. I wrote them saying I didn't want their monthly magazine - and they informed me that I had to receive it, since it was their sole venue for distributing certain required notices. I considered sending every issue back to them, postage-free, my address removed, and wrapped around a cinder-block - but that would have been more effort than it's worth. Bastards.