Unpacking and Organizing

About 2 years ago we moved to a smaller town, in a new state, for a slower pace of life. The move happened quickly. We worked on unpacking but never really settled in which is interesting to ponder because after a year, we decided to move to an even smaller town (still in the same area, just a more rural spot). During the time of the two moves, John left a number of boxes unpacked. These included mostly things from his living spaces – his office, hobbies, garage stuff. Some of these boxes have remained boxed up or thrown into not very tidy groups around the house, until recently.

I went about the task of unpacking and arranging much of the house but John asked me not to try to organize his things or the garage so that he could do it. This way, he would know where everything was. I obliged.

Now, we have lived in our new house for a year and John is finally starting to sort through the unpacked boxes and items. The task is a Herculean effort, especially for him.

There’s a few things I want to mention in this post: the difficulty of someone with a TBI unpacking and getting those items organized in a meaningful way for them; the fact that John and I have very different thoughts about how this should be done (a sort of men are from Mars, Women are from Venus thing); and my reactions to it.

He has been spending a few hours a week tackling his stuff. He is making progress but it’s hard to tell. I feel bad because he first said, a couple of weeks ago, “You may not be able to tell but I’ve been getting organized.” My response to that was, “great and I have been noticing.” Then, a week later he said, “I hope you’ve noticed how much progress I’ve made.” I said, “Well, if you want me to be honest… I’ve noticed you’re making efforts but, by looking around our kitchen and dining room (where we were standing at the time), I can’t really say that I’ve noticed a positive, cleaner house.” I assured him that I knew he was working on it and that I respect that and appreciate that; but that, to me, if we were having guests over, I’d be frantically picking up all the piles and stacking it all in a central but unseen location. I further explained that I want him to keep getting organized but to understand I’m probably not going to mention it. I’ve been working hard to ignore the many piles taking over my kitchen counter space and dining table and whatnot. If I ponder upon them for too long, I’ll snap and feel compelled to pick it up or start asking John what he wants to do with it. This isn’t helpful for either of us. It rattles him. He will do something with the pile to appease me but then not recall what was in it, where he put it, and so on. So, in his efforts to slowly (painstakingly slowly) get his things unpacked and put away, I need to try to ignore it. He needs the time to sort through it all, determine what needs to be thrown out, what goes to donation, what is being kept and then where the kept item will live. It’s a multi-step process that requires a lot of executive functioning skills. Recall that John took a big hit with his executive functioning part of his brain with this TBI.

For the time being, I’m sort of grateful for social distancing measures because we don’t have plans for any visitors. Even having my mom over right now would make me fret.