The Urge

Right now, as I write this, I'm feeling a strong tugging urge to CLEAN THIS DAMN STUDIO! You know how they show hoarders on television who've created tunnels of crap in their houses? That's how the studio feels. It doesn't look like a hoarder's home, I mean, there aren't any cat feces or enormous man-eating dust bunnies or piles of newspapers from 1939 crawling up the walls. There's just so much stuff everywhere. Where I'm sitting right now is a long 8 foot fold out table with the computer, monitor and keyboard crammed onto the left side, and bottles, vials, drying soap, projects, USPS shipping boxes, a hole puncher, a bag of evaluation perfumes, a stack of books (Arctander on top), a stack of papers (Jeanne Rose notes on top), a box of vintage dresses and hand crocheted purses, my bucket of resin, the labdanum doodies, and bills. That's just this table. Behind me are two more tables, my blending desk and my packaging table, and a recent edition, an antique hutch, all covered end to end with more perfume-related stuff. And there's a cabinet full of undiluted raw materials, two wooden shelving units piled high with clean, empty liter bottles for formulating, more books, perfume CD's, samples from other perfumers, soaping supplies, boxes of bottles, the al-embic and its accompanying gear. Things are piled so high, some even touch the ceiling! Oh, and under the packaging table are plastic bins full with bottles, tins, vials, old formulation notebooks, and under the table I'm sitting at are bins of raw herbs and flowers, bottles of hydrosols, a bin of old soaps, and the printer.

There's a definite path through the room, but thankfully, nothing falling into the walkway. It gets a regular dusting and vacuuming and if anything happens to jump from one of the overcrowded tables, it gets picked up and placed in the back of the lemming line. At times, it's overwhelming. But right now I want to do something about it, starting with the hutch.

Wish me luck because I'm going in . . .