Breaking Barriers
THE amount of things my wife and I accumulated over a period of eleven years is unbelievable. I came to Kuala Lumpur from Penang with only a few pieces of clothes stuffed into a worn out duffel bag. That was as much as I could carry with me.
The modestly-sized house my wife and I call home was sparsely furnished then. Although small, it was neat and airy. We got a contractor to do some renovations to make it wheelchair accessible. An awning was built over the driveway so that I could get in and out of the car come rain or shine.
We gradually added shelving units in the living room, bedrooms and kitchen to make space to store our ever increasing possessions over the years. Between the two of us, we have filled the house to the brim. Odds and ends of all sorts occupied every nook and cranny. There is hardly space left for anything else.
Foreseeing I will be out of action for a while after the surgery and subsequently the dialysis, I thought it was a good idea to tidy up the house before that. Dialysis also require a clean environment to reduce the instances of infection.
I only realised how much stuff we have amassed when I started clearing up the area surrounding my workspace. There were stacks of conference kits, old newspapers, manuals and training handouts that were stored in two large wooden storage boxes, piled up on a three-seater sofa and crammed into the numerous shelving units in the living room
I thought the information contained in these materials could be of use to my work one day. Contrary to that, they have been left undisturbed and collecting dust for many years. They will be sorted. I intend to be brutal and without mercy when doing that. Otherwise, nothing will get thrown out again. The really useful ones will be kept and the rest sold to the old newspaper collector.
Out of the three rooms in the house, two are chockful of carton boxes large and small filled with whatnots. Among them are two old and unusable wheelchairs and spare parts, souvenirs and gifts from my trips aboard and personal effects I eventually moved down from Penang.
My wife and I used to have a penchant for collecting porcelain figurines. We stopped because there was no more space for us to display them. Keeping them dust free is another nightmare. Most of them are in storage in boxes scattered all over the house.
We also have chargers for old mobile phones, rusty tools, and bags of all shapes and sizes. Those are things I no longer have use for. I shudder to think how much more I have to throw away when I am done with the clearing up, not because of sentimentality but the amount of work that I have to put in to sort them out and dispose of later.
From my work desk alone, I have cleared away Lego minifigures, fountain pens, thumb drives and stacks of bills, receipts and old letters. They have collectively made my desk look like a garbage dump. Now that it is neat and tidy, working has suddenly become a joy again.
If I had known I would feel this way working on an uncluttered desk, I would have kept it clean. I always thought I thrived in organised chaos. There was an article some time back that said a messy desk and intelligence go hand in hand. I can tell you without a doubt that is a fallacy.