music, therapy, and me

My home is full of stuff. Music Therapy stuff that I have collected, curated, and used over my career of 33 years as a music therapist. Thirty of those years were at a facility where I worked with school-aged clients in a residential and school setting, so I have lots of materials that are meant to spark the most uninterested of people into some sort of interaction. Add into that all the years of textbook purchases, intern training information, and several decades as a church musician, and I have lots of music and music therapy stuff around, and it is piling up. Right now, my focus is on getting things from work to home. I am almost finished with that process. Once everything is home, I will be ready to organize into my piles - give, sell, toss, and keep. Fortunately, once everything is home in two weeks, I will have all sorts of time to engage in organizing, but I am starting to do some of that right now. I am looking around my space and am trying to envision how I will need to access...

... and I am sure that you are wondering? "What?????" Let me explain. Way back, many years ago, the Dollar Tree started selling die-cut collections of large visuals that had a common theme. I bought them all and then laminated them all. I have two file boxes full of laminated die-cuts that I have used over and over again for many years. My Dollar Tree no longer offers those packs of 10 die-cuts for a dollar, and I miss getting new die-cuts when I go to buy things for work. Oh well. Anyway, these die-cuts fit inside file folders, so the boxes that I have contain many themed collections to go with many of the TMEs that I have either created or adopted over the years. I have a folder with farm visuals and another one with continents. Chances are that I have die-cuts that work with just about every TME that I have designed to use visual aids. I also have three other boxes with other types of visuals, tools, and song sheets. I put them all into my car yesterday which opened up lot...

I have officially entered the time of the year where it is difficult to tell what day it is on any given day. I have to look at my calendar to see what I will be doing today. As a result, I wake up a bit confused each and every morning. Today will include a change in my schedule - most of my clients from my first group will be gone for the morning to compete in the local Job Olympics. So, I will have an extra hour to sit and contemplate things - or take stuff to my car - that would be a better use of that extra time. I have so much stuff, and I have so little motivation to organize it into useable systems. Just can't get myself to take control of the stuff yet. I am hoping that I will find that motivation before I am finished with stuff, but that's not really happening - yet. I have set up some shelves, and more are on the way for the library.  I am a hoarder. I don't think it is pathological - yet - but it could easily become that way. I have difficulty getting rid of just...