About a year ago, my husband and I became fed up with my cluttered nightstand. I do a lot of work in my bedroom, (I know, bad sleep hygiene) and my nightstand was practically sagging with the weight of all of the books, magazines, and doo-dads that I'd piled and placed on its surface. So, I bought a wonderful basket made specifically for such clutter and placed it near the nightstand. Then I cleansed. I cleared off the top of that nightstand completely and filled that basket with only the most worthy of items: back issues of Atomic Ranch and Dwell magazines, a Frommer's guide to European Cruising, and a thick file of clippings and photos of ideas for the dream house that we're hoping to build when we become empty nesters.
It felt good, clearing things out, cleaning things off, tossing the old and unnecessary. When I finished, I was left with a wide, empty surface, a tabula rasa, a plank of possibilities. All I needed was my lamp and my alarm clock. That's all I needed.
For about a week.
I couldn't help it. I need that framed photo of my husband and me with our dear (now dead) dogs, Daphne and Bessie, even though the frame is broken and the whole thing has to lie flat now. I need that Gustav Klimt paperweight that I bought at a museum in Vienna. I need that. And I need those back issues of Multimedia and Internet at Schools magazine that I pilfered from the school library (Don't worry, I'll give them back!). And I need my latest copy of Games magazine, which I take a whole month to finish, considering I can only work on it for the ten minutes before I fall asleep each night. I need that. And I need my nook! I need it there on my nightstand. And I need that awesome candle that one of my students gave me for Christmas that makes the room smell like a spa. And that's all I need. I don't need anything else. Oh, I need my glasses, those I need. And a box of tissues and a book about Twitter because I may start tweeting someday soon. But that's it. That's all I need.
My nightstand is back to looking exactly how it looked before I bought the basket. And the basket is now overflowing, too.
I'm not bothered by the sight of my cluttered nightstand anymore. It's still-life. It's metaphoric. You can learn a lot about a person by looking at her nightstand. What does yours say?
Did you ever see "The Jerk" with Steve Martin? Here's the scene that will pretty much sums up my experience: (I apologize for the half-green screen image. It was the only copy of the scene I could find.)