Don’t you love getting a new purse? It probably took you forever to find the perfect one. You bring it home and sit on the floor with your new purse and your old purse and start the transfer process, tossing out old papers and receipts that have been lurking in the Old Purse (OP), and maybe whittling down the number of business cards and credit cards you don’t really need to always have with you. Maybe get rid of makeup items you haven’t used in a year. Throw out old napkins and tissues that have found their way into the OP. That kind of thing. Then you painstakingly arrange all your can’t-live-without items in the NP (New Purse). You hold up the NP and admire it, thrilled at the thought of how organized you’re going to be. Instead of tossing most the old items you’ve decided to leave behind, you stick them all in the OP and stash it on a shelf in your closet. You never know when you might need some of that stuff in the future.
For several days, you’re careful to keep everything in its place in the NP. No willy-nilly stuffing things in there for you. Then one day a week later you go to lunch with friends and get a credit card receipt. You fold the receipt neatly and slip it down the side of your NP. And don’t think anything about it. With the next couple of receipts you fold them neatly and slip them down the side of your NP. And then you’re in a hurry one day and you grab the CVS receipt and wad it into a ball and jam it in. Funny how that now becomes the norm.
It’s been three weeks. NP isn’t so new anymore, although you still admire it and the new life of organization you expect to live. However, as you walk past your NP sitting on the kitchen counter, your head whips toward it in frustration as you see that the NP looks just like the OP, with papers, envelopes, tissues all spilling out the top. You shrug your shoulders and tell yourself, that’s just the way of the world.