How does a fox row a boat anyway?

[faustus]

I have this very strong memory - which I think connects to Douglas Adams's fiction somewhere, or even Doctor Who - of a scientist or writer being found in a room full of papers and stuff, and he taps the side of his head and says, "If you think this room is untidy, you should see what it looks like in here."

When I moved into the house two rooms filled with boxes [see left]: the dining room and the middle room, but especially the dining room. Most of these were boxes of books, and they made their onto shelves. Bit by bit I found my speakers, amp and CD player, so I could listen to music while I worked. Eventually I needed to make room for a table, so most of the remaining boxes made it up to the middle room. Of course, it would frequently be that something I needed was at the bottom of one of these boxes, and the content never quite made it back.

Meanwhile every so often I would tidy the living room by my patent manner of piling Stuff On A Chair (TM). This usually meant that I could find a bill by manner of calculating the number of geological strata that needed to be excavated. This worked perfectly and efficiently unless we suffered the equivalent of ploughing - layers being replaced in reverse chronological order - or landslide - randomising of strata thanks to gravity, wind and plastic folders lacking sufficient friction.

Sooner or later it would reach the next stage: being Dumped in a Box. Only when stuff is Dumped in a Box does it stand a chance of being sorted through and filed or whatever. Unfortunately, this tends to end up with a pile of foolscap wallets (look for the clue in the title) of which only two get used and labelled: A-Z and Miscellaneous. On occasions this becomes Miscellaneous I and Miscellaneous II.

It might be a bit easier if I was able to keep up with the newspapers I buy - which in the general run of things was reduced to Monday (Media), Tuesday (Jobs), Friday (Film and Music) and Saturday (TV and Books), then Monday, Friday and Saturday, Friday and Saturday, then just Saturday. Despite this reduction I am just reading reviews from January of papers kept but not read at the time. And of course I made the mistake of collecting Independents for the philosophy and Guardians for poetry. I could just throw these away (read: recycle), but there might be that vital article that makes all the difference (like seeing an old tutor in one of the supplements).

Back last summer, I filled my office with print outs of the Pratchett book and marksheets and profiles. This pile never quite got sorted and became more chaotic as the year progressed. Further drafts were added. Proofs of two or three volumes. Copies of journals and books made it out, but not back again. A crisis was brewing. Meanwhile, the clean route across the middle room to my office - the footpath ploughed across the cultivated field - was being encroached upon by landslides and other debris. Something had to be done.

There is marking to be done. There are books to edit. But, still. There are house guests.

And so over the last week, I've made a start. The problem is one room cannot be done and completed - space needs to be made to move stuff to, and the stuff from there has to be put somewhere. Nonfiction to that room, fiction to that room, unread stuff to another, and so forth. It becomes clearest in the kitchen: stuff needs to be put away because there's no room to wash anything else, and the sides are full of things needing washing, but because of the way the cupboards are arranged stuff has to come out for this to be put away...

There is a real danger as things are placed at the bottom of the stairs to be taken up, or at the top to be taken down. Like Mrs Flittersnoop's invention, some objects end up being taken down again, despite having been taken up, and vice versa. And as objects encroach the treads, it occurs to me that it is easier and safer to climb up over obstacles than down over them. I've never fallen downstairs. Yet.

Despite all my efforts - and a fairly solid Friday and Sunday, plus most of Saturday, working through this - as of about 9 o'clock Sunday night the house looked less tidy than it did last Sunday. I'm working on the principle that it's like one of those logic puzzles with three cannibals and three foxes which you need to get across a river without one of them eating the others. There's the backwards step you have to take.

I suspect it's the river Pregel, of course.

A couple more hours, and I think I've cracked it. The dining table is clear. The floors are swept into the kitchen where I will vacuum them when I get up. There are three boxes of newspapers and files that can be dumped upstairs in the middle room for now, a number of sacks of recycling, and a load of stuff to be binned. The office, which on Wednesday was free of piles, now has piles again, but the BSFA magazines, NYRSFs and so forth have made it in there. There are two piles of books to go on shelves, a pile of CDs that need listing and then filing. The middle room is still a mess, but there is actually a whole lot less on the floor than there was last week.

I have until 4pm Monday to finish this phase - my bedroom can wait - and this time I really have to keep it tidy. But I can see what that path is paved with.