It’s the circle of ……… stuff

I need to get rid of a desk. It’s a very large desk, and it’s handy for storage. But I have too much furniture and too much stuff; it’s got to go.

I’ve been planning the desk’s exit for months. I’ve had a new, smaller piece of furniture sitting next to it in a very inconvenient spot, waiting to take its place. It’s making all of us nuts having to navigate around the two of them, and I should take care of this. But every time I start to act on this plan, it’s like I’m stuck in a children’s book about a moose wanting a muffin …

I need to get rid of the desk. But the desk is filled with stuff and piled high with stuff.

In order to get rid of the desk, I have to empty it.

In order to empty it, I have to find a place to put the stuff.

The small stuff can go into the nine-drawer chest I bought for that purpose – the one we all have to keep awkwardly walking around. The stuff that needs to be filed can go…… nowhere.

So I need to bring up the file cabinet from the garage.

Once I move that cabinet into the den, I can file all the stuff I emptied out of the desk.

In order to move the file cabinet into the den, I need to get rid of the desk.

See my problem?  Maybe, like the moose in the children’s book, I need a muffin.

In order to have a muffin, I need to bake a muffin.

In order to bake a muffin, I need to clean my kitchen ….

And there we go:  the thought circle stuns me into immobility once again.

I think the problem here is that I’m trying to be perfect and do everything perfectly:  I must find a way to do this at a time when I can thoughtfully sort the contents of the desk, and simultaneously coordinate all this movement so precisely that no time is wasted and not one item spends a single second out of place.

That is actually ridiculous. I wouldn’t expect it from anyone else, so why do I expect it of myself?

Here’s a thought: I could get a box. Or even two, or three.

And those boxes could hold the stuff while we move the furniture and – hooray – get rid of the desk. And maybe those boxes could even sit on the floor for a couple of days while I sort through them. That would be perfect enough, which sounds like an oxymoron, but is a key concept in actually accomplishing something. It’s perfect enough.