Horizontal Surface-itis

My friend Nancy C.'s husband diagnosed her as having an illness he calls horizontal surface-itis. It's the uncontrollable urge to fill up every horizontal surface with stuff. Alas, I suffer from it, too. After describing this to friend Hazel, she realized she also has it. All of us are now, with Christmas fast approaching, trying desperately to clean off all those horizontal surfaces that we have piled high, including, in my case, the horizontal surface known as a floor.

In our house, the results of this creeping disease are particularly dramatic, because Johnny apparently suffers from it as well. He has spent the last week picking his piles of important papers (along with not-so-important papers) off the floor of the study and putting them away. For the first time in years, we discovered we have a blue rug in there. Unfortunately, we're still unsure about the former kids' playroom floor covering as that is my job to unclutter and I haven't had the will to begin. It's all I can do to make enough room on the table to put two plates down so we can eat. (I seem to have other things that take higher priority than undoing my horizontal surface-itis-ness. Like another Christmas Bird Count two days ago and a jumping lesson on my wonderful gelding yesterday.)

I can always find excuses for delaying the inevitable... Grandkids are arriving for Christmas and they want sparkling lights so my mission for today is to clean up the greenhouse and string lights all over the jillions of plants in it. The greenhouse, being attached to the front of our house and more commonly known as the jungle room, is easily accessible and viewable from the living area of our house and really does look pretty all lit up. But, yes, I will also have to clean up the rest of the joint so everyone has a place to sleep and eat not covered with dust and who-knows-what-else.

And, since the looming holiday is Christmas, I need to wrap gifts. Which will create more of a mess all over the floor, because that's where I'm most comfortable spreading out the wrapping paper and working.

Horizontal surface-itis is alive and well at our house.