Anatomy of a messy apartment

In the spirit of procrastination, I bring you this break-down of my messy living room. Certain non-neutral observers (*cough* Mum and Dad *cough*) will tell you my natural state is that of a pig wallowing in its own filth, but I'm actually usually quite a grown-up about cleaning regularly, while still not being the *neatest* soul in the entire world. I'll admit I've been a bit slack though, but since I'm going away on Tuesday, I need to do some cleaning! But first, it makes total sense to blog about the crap that has accumulated in my apartment. Kind of like those features in magazines where you see a writer's office or what's in someone's fridge, except I haven't run around and removed all the shameful evidence and put up pictures of the Dalai Lama and so forth. Some of the numbers are a bit hard to see, but they are usually next to each other and you probably don't care that much to be honest!

1) Presents! The fruits of my Christmas shopping, waiting to be wrapped and/or chucked in my suitcase as is. Liz walked in when I had my birthday drinks and got all excited that I had presents. Sadly, no, I only got two birthday presents (and glad to get them too, of course).

2) When I did a new load of laundry, the old lot made its way onto this chair and has remained there for several days now, apart from the bits that have fallen onto the floor.

3) Red shoes! I think they're here because I was Skyping someone while drunk and wanted to show them off?

4) A whole pile of paperwork that needs filing. (Just from the last week or two!) Until I moved to France, I had two methods of dealing with Important Documents - 1) Stick them in a shoebox and assume God will sort it out 2) Carry them around in my handbag until they get dog-eared and illegible and then conclude I might as well throw them away. I always have a bottle of water in my handbag, and even if it doesn't leak (which is like a once-monthly occurrence) then it often has condensation on the outside and manages to destroy documents and create a soupy loam of tissues in the bottom of the bag anyway. Reason 345 of 563 why you don't go digging around in a girl's handbag without permission. Anyway, when you move to France you quickly discover that these methods DO NOT FLY! Everywhere you go, from the tax office to the bank to the rental agency, people will want documentation of your movements from birth. "What do you mean, you don't have paperwork for the vaccinations you had as a baby?" "You need to give us evidence that you were resident in New Zealand for purposes other than obtaining a drivers licence.... What? No, being born there isn't enough!" etc. etc. So now everything gets filed (eventually) and smugly produced in triplicate everywhere I go.

5) Hard to see, but it's an empty can of Red Bull. My colleagues find the fact that I drink Red Bull an endless font of humour for some reason. I know it's not good for you (and for the record, I drink the sugarfree variety at work, this is the full-fat "weekend treat" version on my table though) but come on, 4 out of the 7 go on smoke breaks every half an hour and no-one frickin tells hilarious jokes about how they're "sponsored by Marlborough" or whatever. This ranks right up there with the minimum twice-weekly comments on how I must be cold (surely by like, the third time, you can deal with the fact that NO I'M NOT COLD, STOP COMMENTING) in the list of Things My Colleagues Do That Annoy Me. Oh and the one woman who rubs her hands together all the time and it sounds like they're made out of dry leaves.

6) There's a lot of crap on the table, so I'm not even sure what I'm drawing your attention to here. Maybe the industrial-strength cat claw clippers that allow me to clip maybe one of Bob's claws at a time before he runs away and sulks for half an hour. Maybe the empty box of Tortina biscuits from Monoprix (soooo good, go buy some!), or maybe the pile of dinner plates hiding behind my laptop.

7) The current batch of laundry, which is also dry and needs to be put away. Why is putting laundry away such an infernal chore? I don't even iron anything!

8) I don't see 8 anywhere, I think I forgot it.

9) A couple of squares of dark chocolate left over from the awesome brownies I made for our work Christmas lunch yesterday. I drank maybe like half a bottle of Vouvray (bubbly) and was *not* drunk, butI was sick as in the evening. Curses! Maybe drinking in the daytime is not for me after all.

10) The document file optimistically waiting for me to do that filing. There's also another pile of documents underneath it.

11) At Home by Bill Bryson, which I picked up from the library for a friend. We had talked about it ages ago and I said I'd get it out for her if she ever wanted (cos she doesn't have a card) and then when, months later, she texted to ask for "that book" I texted back "At home? I'm not sure if I can make it over there straight away but I'll try xx". The next day I got a message from her saying "Ummm... was that text last night meant for me?" As soon as I read it back, I realised that she thought I'd accidentally texted her in the midst of arranging a booty call. Ha ha! Overly optimistic, my friend!

12) I forgot 12 too. I'm a moron.

13) Clearly the giant cardboard box graveyard that takes up the entire east wing of the apartment is not going anywhere.

That's it. Does that mean I have to start cleaning now?? :(