Comparing STUFF

So the STUFF in the STUDY is still there, although slightly diminished. (I have been doing my best to curb its alarming procreative abilities.)  I do, however, still pull the door closed when people come to visit, because the room does rather look like an impressionistic rendition of post H-bomb Hiroshima.

A friend commented over the weekend that her study resembled a whore's handbag. I was intrigued. Not only because of my own study woes, but also because I have never had the opportunity of rummaging around in a prostitute's portmanteau. I had to have a peek, of course, to educate myself.

Not knowing much about what hookers keep in their carryalls, I may be wrong about this, but I would dare to venture that, strictly speaking, my study is far more floozy than my friend's. And this is why...

First thing that grabbed my attention was the floor. I could actually see it. And not only that, I could walk a fair distance into the room without standing on anything that wasn't floor. My study floor is carpeted with everything from cycling shoes to Reader's Digests. You wouldn't be far wrong if you suggested that the filing cabinet had stripped itself right there in the middle of the room.

Her bookshelves were neatly stacked with an array of albums, textbooks and manuals. Made me think that bookshelves would be a useful commodity in my own study, if only to provide more space for STUFF-creep, or, and this is a far more reasonable use, to provide any visitor thrust  into that room with something to hold onto and steady themselves against.

The chair at her desk was drawn slightly away from the desk, and a sleeping cat looked quite comfortable, curled up in the middle of it. My office chair, on the other hand, has a box of condoms (blown up are a great visual tool when explaining breast feeding - no, really!), a pack of linen savers and a breast pump (kinky for a concubine, perfectly plausible for a midwife). 

My friend's desk also begged me to acknowledge it. It actually had desk stuff on it, computers, keyboards, a couple of pens, a notepad. My desk is draped with the fine art of my offspring. There are hammers and hooks and a handfuls of keys that belong in long-forgotten locks. There is a childbirth video and a t-shirt that needs mending. Not to mention the scrapbooking paraphenalia, the wad of sheet music and the four cycling helmets carefully balanced in a pink plastic crate that was, ironically, purchased for keeping things tidy. The crowning glory of my desk, (and this, if nothing else, will be what tips the slutty-study scale in my direction) are the anatomically correct childbirth education teaching aids. One is a yellowed plastic pelvis, a little wobbly in the joints (just to be perfectly representational), the other (*blush*) is Doris, my great velvet vagina.

So I guess that settles it then - my study is the harlot of my house. I am now more convinced than ever to rid my home of this scourge before the day is done.