Saturday, September 05, 2026

Rearranging deck chairs

A futile or pointless task is sometime described as “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” My study at home has been in chaos for months now. Between finishing off the manuscripts for two books and packing up my office at the college, I have just let entropy have its way. But I have been doggedly working my way through the stuff that came home: boxes in the dining room, bags in the entryway, bin and boxes and bags in the living room. All that stuff needing to find a spot to live (aside from the floor) or be gone…

Last weekend I finally emptied the last box in the dining room and have only a bin left in the living room. The rest has been shelved or stashed or sent off. Or moved to my study floor where no one but me sees it. Except on Monday evening I agreed to record an interview for an evening news show Tuesday afternoon, inviting who knows how many people to see my working space.  Something had to be done and fast.

Since I no longer have my college office as a back-up, Tuesday morning had me taking the semi-organized piles and really sorting them. More stuff went into the recycling. And hey, the Lent book and its Spanish translation have been proofed, so all those books can get re-shelved. Same for the stuff I used to prepare to preach this week. There were still a lot of piles, which I then lined up like those deck chairs in front of the shelves where they did not show on camera (I checked!). I did the interview (you can see it here - about the Nancy Grace Roman telescope that launched this week), whew. 

What surprised me was how much less cluttered it feels with those deck chairs re-arranged. I am not tripping over them when I try to get stuff from the shelves. Each pile has a focus, which I can now tackle one at a time. Sometimes just getting the deck chairs lined up makes a difference, if nothing else I have a clearer evacuation route from my study!