Old habits, and their hard, hard death

So...the age old dilemma.  Company is coming and I'm in the middle of some organizing in an obvious space.  There's not enough time to actually finish the project before the company comes.  So, I do what I've done since I can remember.

As a child, if we were having company and I was told to clean my room, it all just got stuffed in the closet.

I remember seeing a cartoon in the Sunday comics with a teenager who was asked to clean his room.  In the final frame, His mom entered the room and found a 2x4 propped up against the closet door with the sides bulging.  It was not so much funny as much as terribly, terribly familiar.

So...company is coming and I need it to look good, so that I'm not mocked openly.  (This hasn't happened all that often, but it's bruised me when it has, so....I'm vulnerable.)

Now that I'm an adult, the process has been slightly refined.  Now I stuff the stacks of paper on the desk into grocery tote bags.  (So, you know....it's environmentally friendly.)  Then I take the bags and put them in an unseen area of the house.  The laundry room is an option, but I just got that clean.  So, now the tote bags, the file boxes, and all the stacks of stuff that don't have a home are going upstairs to the craft room.

The truth is (and the reason why I'm here and writing is) that I'm running out of spaces to put these things. 

And I'm unwilling to desecrate the places that have actually become clean and organized. 

And the piles are mounting.

I need a solid block of time when no one will be here to just go through, purge, let it get worse before it gets better.  But it seems that every time I get into that phase...the worse before the better, the darkness before the dawn...it gets interrupted by unexpected and spontaneous company.

So today I am looking for a little grace, because like everybody else, I'm stuck doing the same dumb thing over and over and over again. It makes me wonder if I should come up with my own version of the serenity prayer.  Something like:  God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I must keep, the courage to get rid of what must go, and the wisdom to know the difference.

In the meantime, this old habit will die a slow and painful death, but it can be conquered.  Yes, it can.