Decision fatigue

At the weekend, our fridge freezer in the kitchen packed up. I say in the kitchen, because we also have one in the garage. One was here when we moved in, one we brought with us when we moved down.

The one in the garage was frozen solid, and we decided to defrost it. Sadly, we didn’t anticipate the amount of water that was going to spread across the garage, and so I’ve spent the last two days processing boxes to get to the soggy ones on the bottom of the stacks.

We have a lot of boxes. Rather too many in fact. Partly because I’m really bad at making decisions on what to do with stuff, so instead I don’t, I just kind of stack it. Which isn’t sustainable over a lifetime, as the garage demonstrates. Damp boxes though have to be processed, so I’ve dealt with around 30 boxes I think, though I have rather lost count, and now the car is stuffed full of stuff to go to the charity shop, some much loved but very soggy books are in the recycling, and for once the bin is actually full.

And I’m exhausted. Every item I touch that requires a decision taking uses up energy. What if I need it? What if I forget it? Or there are memories that flood over me and they use up energy too, and then have to be refiled.

I’m not describing any of this very well. I don’t know if all this is a me being an incompetent adult thing, or an autistic trait, or some combination of the two, and to be honest, I don’t much care, I’d just like to learn some strategies that work better for dealing with it all.

Tomorrow I’ll be very tired, and a bit miserable, and I’ll what if quite a lot about the stuff I take to the charity shop. But it has to go because I need to shop, and at the moment there isn’t room for any shopping in the car! And it can’t go back in the garage, I think it expanded as it came out and there doesn’t seem to be as much space in there as stuff I’ve taken out.

I kind of wish there was a way we could live in a yurt in the garden for a month, and declutter and reorganise the house room by room. Shift the bedrooms around. Buy me some new furniture, to replace stuff that I’ve had forever, and check out the options for that on Simba and get the perfect height bed. Put up the shelves in the living room, put all the books on them, work through all the too small clothes and get shot (what if we need them? What then? my brain sabotages me at the very thought.)

Ah well. I did get rid of a lot of books. Some I think I’ll really rather miss. I knew that I had them somewhere, and I thought one day I’d find shelf space and get them all out again. Not to be.