Barffie The Whine Connoisseur

I am slightly obsessive compulsive over certain things, during certain times of the year/month/week, but most often than not, sometimes that OCDness never happens at all… and The Nua Machine takes over. And like I’ve mentioned before, The Nua Machine is powerful. Do not mock The Nua Machine’s prowess.

When the OCDness happens, I am somewhat too eager to clean things up.

Be it wiping the dust off the shelves (it’s happening a little less often as the other kinds of clutter in my life build up), or arranging the spare room so that it doesn’t look like a tornado just went through it (I have lots of stuff from my CWS involvement), or rearranging my browser’s Bookmarks folder… there’s just too much clutter in my life to clear up.

One of the darn places that the clutter builds up most efficiently would be the strategically placed dining table in the living room. It’s got a good size, it’s right smack in the middle of everything… the kitchen, the TV, the cats’ litter boxes, the power socket…

It’s just nice for my laptop, and some CWS paperwork, and some new mail (opened and unopened ones), and some envelopes that I salvaged from all the stupid paper snail mail (especially bills) I get, and then some articles of clothing, and some cables here and there, and… yes, clutter is most efficient when you can’t catch up with it.

So one weekend I rearranged the layout of the spare room, before we fostered Oreo and Pocky – there was barely space to walk. Shifted the sofa bed, the heavy Ikea cupboard’s position, cleaned out some boxes of junk, shifted the computer tables… and voila! Walking space! Suddenly the room opened up its spaciousness quite nicely.

Another weekend I sat down and stuffed CWS paperwork in one of the hardest to use clear folder in history – and that was bought in Toyogo. The pockets were stuck together and there’s almost no way of opening the pockets except to use some brute strength and sheer stubbornness. So I managed to stuff many many sets of printed material into the clear folder, sorted out lots of pieces of other paper stuff into the plastic document cupboard (also from Toyogo)… and I realised that with all the paper and plastic in that room – I am not that environmentally-friendly after all. Dammit.

One of the most productive weekends was spent clearing out our storeroom, even though it wasn’t to be Chinese New Year in a long time. Satisfaction aside, we managed to de-clutter, clear out space to make more space for big bags of cat litter. Yay.

So yesterday, my OCDness happened. And I transferred the CWS shared folder from our original host (not everyone is FTP savvy and all, so it’s hard to upload stuff even though downloading stuff was OK) to DropBox which offers a really nifty piece of freeware for you to sync files offline and online. They also offer a generous 2GB of storage which was much better than others out there, but most important of all, its interface is rather intuitive.

Anyway, so I transferred the files over, and then did quite a bit of an overhaul. I am the do-er sort. Not the talk and talk and nothing happens sort. So DO I did. I deleted duplicate files, rearranged files into folders, renamed some of the confusing filenames, sent invites out to the committee and hope people respond…

It was good. At least something was actually done. And not sitting there waiting for something to happen. I hope this would boost our efficiency a little bit more. Phew!

Apart from that… I de-clutter my dining table every once in a while, especially when the tabletop disappears from sight… and that would be my cue to fight The Nua Machine and start packing.

*looks at the giant pile of laundry waiting to be folded* But that would have to wait. Until tonight, maybe.