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If you were to dip your head into my office and observe its set-up, the one thing you would conclude is that my organizational skills are somewhat lacking. And you would be right.

I’m a firm believer in the train of thought that is, “there is a method to my madness,” and that method is to locate an empty area of space and place objects within.

This dogma of organization has followed me through much of my life. My room as a child was akin to a maze of discarded clothes, discarded toys, an unmade bed, and whatever other happenstance made up the disjointed nature of my room.

It carried on to college where I was fortunate enough to have a roommate, at least for a time that bought into the same ideals of stuff-placement. Granted I had “matured” somewhat and the mess wasn’t as reminiscent of an earthquake as it could have been.

This shifting notion of order continued into adulthood where I again “matured” somewhat to the point that I didn’t want just stuff lying anywhere. Not when there were drawers to clutter and that has continued to this day.

Our house isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it’s not that great either. Lately, I’ve experienced yet another “maturation” and begun cleaning a little at a time in the hopes that I will catch up with the cleaning at some point.

Having cats makes this a little trickier and may require yet one more level of “maturing” to reach that level of cleanliness. I guess I’ve just reached the point of my life where I’m fairly used to my clutter — with exceptions of course.

It should be known from this point forward that I don’t like puzzles much and if you’re familiar with my level of patience you would understand why I don’t like puzzles. I’ve never really liked puzzles.

This is going to seem ironic here in a little bit.

The reality is, I don’t have the mind make-up to achieve puzzles. This is an important note when I explain the process of taking the Christmas tree down on Monday morning.

And it has nothing to do with Christmas lights. Go figure.

Instead it has to do with ornaments. Nearly every ornament we have is in a box of its own. I’m not entirely sure why we continue this trend when it might be easier to simply find a couple larger boxes to place them in rather than the big tote, but with a couple of the more fragile ones, I at least understand the reasoning.

Ornaments can often be a link to the past, especially when you are given one with meaning.

Still, putting them away becomes a puzzle and as I’ve said, we all know how much I enjoy puzzles.

Each of the smaller boxes become pieces of a stacking puzzle for the tote. There was a time I would ram the small boxes in where there was room and then sit on the lid if need be to get it closed properly.

I know, I am a nightmare for people who take their organizations seriously.

But over the years, something has changed as I became more methodical about how I arranged my boxes. It’s actually become a challenge I’ve embraced and I’m getting pretty good at it. Reached a new record even in getting the tree broke down and outside next to the garage at around 45 minutes.

Generally, that’s at least 20 minutes longer when you work in the fight with the tree to wrestle it into the giant ghost-like bag while simultaneously shooing cats away from the stand where they insist, that for some reason, that water is better than the clean, filtered water.

But this time, it worked smoothly because I’m starting to recognize the placement of small boxes of ornaments. It’s like the computer game Tetris that the world became addicted to way back when and probably still today.

I didn’t even swear once, which as you know, is sometimes as challenging for me as putting puzzles together, which ironically causes me to swear.

It’s a vicious circle.

So, what’s the moral of the story? Keep on top of chores? keep a clean house? Learn to like puzzles? Continue to “mature?”

Nope. I just had nothing else to talk about this week so you just read an entire column on organization.

I’m sorry to have wasted your time.

Happy New Year everyone!