Sunday Shuffle

Don't let anyone fool you. The art of shuffling is 100 percent contradictory to decluttering.

To truly declutter, downsize, organize, whatever you want to call, one must either use an item, toss it or donate it. If one merely "cleans" off the kitchen counter by moving everything to the office, that is merely shuffling. At the end of the day, there may be three clutter-free rooms while the volume in the office (aka Oh My God Room) has nearly tripled.

True story.

Today we played a bit of musical chairs ourselves. The living room furniture we purchased a few years back is deep. There are layers of cushions and pillows that make the couch and chair sit out an extra 6, 8, maybe 10 inches compared to standard sizes. So there was not a way to rearrange the living room to keep existing furniture and accommodate the 2 new recliners.

As a result, the oversized loveseat-type chair was shuffled to the basement even though it is too big to fit in the TV room/exercise room down there, which already has a couch and chair. Then, in order for our recliners to sit back far enough that they can recline and people can still gain access to the living room, we had to take down our tall shelves. The shelving unit got shuffled to the basement and all the contents got shuffled to my office. We also didn't have room to fit the oversized end table between our chairs. So that got shuffled to the basement and some of the contents got shuffled to, you guessed it, my office.

Now we have two partial living rooms set up in the basement. Our living room looks spacious but only because I didn't get the Christmas tree up today. And we have a TV tray temporarily serving as our "end table" between our chairs.

And my office... well, I am supposed to be finding homes for everything I shuffled here. But I got on the computer to turn on Christmas music and my mind shuffled, too, and I found myself blogging instead of cleaning, organizing, whatever I call it. Procrastination, anyone?

Alright. Time to shuffle my butt off the chair and tackle this.

Cue Jingle Bell Rock...