Let's get organized _ not!

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

I bought the book - a small book stuffed with 19th century wisdom on ways to economize - at Sturbridge Village, because when I opened it, there was a suggestion on using ear wax as lip balm and I thought: This is disgusting.

There's got to be a column in it.

And there is, I know. The book would make a great column. But guess what? I can't find it. The book has disappeared.

It was in my books-to-be-looked at pile on the floor next to the pile of newspapers to be read, next to the pile of mail to be answered. That's where it has been for months.

But now, when I need it, it's not there. It's not on my desk either, which is where I keep stacks of other things I know I'm going to need soon. And it's not on my bookshelf with the books that I intend to read, or with the books that have to be returned to the library, or with the books that have to be returned to friends.

I asked my daughters if they'd seen it and they just groaned. The question is too familiar. I ask it a dozen times a day.

"Have you seen the graduation pictures?" "I can't find yesterday's paper." "Do you remember where I put the mail?" "Where's the dog's leash?" "Who took my shoes?"

"Have you ever counted the number of hours you waste every day looking for things you can't find?" my husband said when I phoned his office to ask if he had seen the missing book. "This morning when I left you were hunting for the scissors. Last night you couldn't find the portable phone. Yesterday morning you were a crazy person because you couldn't find a blouse. This is getting out of hand. You have to get organized."

Organized. I'm always trying to get organized. I have drawers full of alphabetical files. I keep buying more drawers, making more files, storing more books and magazines and papers, parceling, packing, piling.

But I can never find anything I need.

Simplify. Simplify. That's what Thoreau said, and that's what I say to myself every day. But how? How do you separate what's important from what you think is important? Everything saved - in a cellar, attic, box, drawer or on the floor - means something or it wouldn't have been have saved in the first place.

So how do you simplify? Where do you start? Do you toss out old records, old 45's and 78's because you don't play them anymore? What if someday you to play them? What if your children suddenly want them, or your grandchildren? You have to keep them, and you have to keep the old record player to play them on, too.

Are you supposed to part with the cradle your children slept in? Or a box full of Golden books and Fisher Price toys? What about the files of drawings and report cards and book reports and baseball, hockey and basketball cards?

"The reason you can't find what you're looking for is because you have too many things," my husband says. "If you're not going to use something, if you don't need it, then don't save it."

But what about want? I used to have a scrapbook full of "Photoplay" and "Modern Screen" articles about Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. I made the scrapbook when I was 10 years old and lost it when I was in my 20's. I certainly don't need it. But I want it. I wish I still had it. I wish I could look through it.

My father gave away my wedding gown. Why did you do that, I asked him? Because I knew you didn't need it anymore, he said.

Need and want. Maybe that's what divides men and women. Maybe that's why my husband can emerge from the cellar with dozens of trashbags, and why I only dust and move and stack.

He walks into his office and plucks from a file exactly what it is he's looking for. I walk into mine, and search for 45 minutes before I find what I need.

Many times I don't find what I need, and it's frustrating. But most times I at least find a buried treasure I'd forgotten I had.