Organization

Yesterday my mother and I spent literally the entire day shopping. To some this may sound like fun and, actually, for a little while, it is. But my mom approaches shopping as one might approach the Iron Man triathlon: as soon as you're finished with one shop, power through to the next; no breaks until we've hit every last thrift store and consignment shop in the North Park/University Heights/Normal Heights and Point Loma sectors of the city of San Diego. Around mid-afternoon, when I realize that we're skipping lunch, it ceases to be a pleasurable outing with my mom and becomes a brutal task we must carry out to its bitter end.

We were searching for a dresser. Lindsay laid claim to the one in my room months ago, intending to move it into her future married-person apartment; and since she and her fiancé had, as of last week, found a place, it was time for me to procure a new receptacle to hold my clothes and loose papers.

It was at our final stop for the evening--the Salvation Army in Point Loma--that I at last spied a piece of furniture that that got passing marks across the board in appearance, functionality, and price. At this point in the evening, it was difficult to tell if I was simply at last settling for something that was no more outstanding than half a dozen other dressers I had looked at that day. Still, the dresser was paid for and my mom and I returned to the shop today to pick it up. It's now sitting beside me as I type these words, and I must say I'm tremendously pleased with this purchase. Its ample drawer space has solved all my former storage problems and it's just a solid, attractive piece of furniture.

Finally being able to store in drawers some items that, for the past four months, had been sitting in brown paper bags at the foot of my bed, inspired me to get even more organized in ways that I've never been organized before. I made a rack to hold and display my earrings, a vast improvement on the clump they'd been sitting in in a bag for the last five years.