I have discovered that I have a need for organization that must be satisfied, but it can be satisfied, and then I can’t do much organizing after that.
When I was in my 20s & 30s I had mostly ‘dead end’ jobs, work that didn’t need any creativity or problem-solving (which I like), & perhaps not coincidentally I used to extensively clean my house (not, like, weekly or anything, I’m not like THAT!), but I had long checklists of housecleaning, detailing every task, & I frequently got through all or large parts of those checklists.
Granted, I was also younger and had a lot more energy.
Now my work tends to be full of the kind of problems I’m good at solving, & when I get home, I have nothing left. It isn’t just that I’m tired, which I am, but it is as if I have a supply of organizational tokens & creativity tokens & when they’re gone, I can only sit & watch old Sopranos episodes or read books I’ve read several times before. The housework has suffered for it, too. I’m going to do housework this weekend, but I already know it’s going to be more of a chore than it used to be. I have been fortunate that I’ve usually seen housecleaning as an organizational challenge, & like I said, while I’m not great at that, I’m not bad at it, and it feels as if I need to do a certain amount of that work each week.
Thinking about the last five years, I haven’t spent any extensive time with my hobbies, and the one thing I did regularly outside of work (aikido) stopped happening due to the pandemic & I’m not going back to that (for reasons).
My hobbies have involved extensive organizational & ‘research’-type tasks, from organizing yarn to learning new knitting techniques to posting stuff on Ravelry, it does look like part of what the hobby provided me was a way to fulfill my itch to organize.
Addendum: I’m hoping that this insight will help me be a bit more patient with myself, rather than feeling guilty about not being more organized at home.
