Cubbyholes

I love that word and all the images that go with it! I’ve always had physical cubbyholes – on shelves and desks, in drawers and closets.  We have an antique desk that once had a cabinet on top. The cabinet broke, but the slant-top desk remains in an upstairs hallway. Inside are these little drawers and nooks and crannies. It totally fits my personality of having little spaces for everything. Pens went in one area and pencils in another; stamps had a little slot; stationery was sorted and sat in another section. I don’t use it as a desk anymore, but when I pass it, I remember those days of sorting. Now, my much larger computer desk has shelves and drawer areas to cover my needs.

I love my kitchen drawers and cabinets to also be sorted into sections; unfortunately, I’m not married to someone with the same affinity toward organization! I allow one “junk drawer*” in the kitchen for odds and ends, but my spouse believes in spreading that drawer to all the others. It’s a never-ending battle. I have similar preferences in my dining room, but now that I’m too weak to always be fixing things up, I have to close my eyes sometimes to his idea of keeping things in their proper place.

Is it all that important? Probably not, but it rankles me when I see my scissors out on the counter, knowing full well, he’ll forget where he put them. I don’t nag anymore; I just wait until I have an extra burst of energy, and then I quietly go around putting things where they belong. My little office here in the den has become my private OCD world, but I have to ‘hide’ things in order to keep Ol’ Sticky Fingers away. Yes, I’m teased, but I really don’t care.

Recently I began to notice that I have also cubbyholed my brain (mind.) I have always seemed to gather information (useful as well as useless) and stored it in particular slots in my head. If it’s something connected to education, I spin the rolodex to that area and extract the necessary information. If it’s trivia, I turn to that area, always being careful to return the information to its proper place. Recipes are in a different area than art, and music is separated from cleaning techniques. I heard that we only use a small portion of the area that stores information, so I don’t worry about running out of memory up there. I do think and become concerned about the possibility of dementia, since it runs in both sides of my family.

I also notice as I age that the retrieval process sometimes runs slower (could also be MS related) but I’ve instituted certain remedies. There’s always the alphabet game – this usually does the trick for me. If it’s a bit more difficult, I just leave it go for the time. Then a little later, it just appears (even at 2:00 A.M.!!)  So my cubbyholes are thriving – both in the physical sense, as well as the mental. Hopefully, this filing system will continue to work.

Peace,

Muff    

*one day soon I’m going to write about all the crap I find there!