Sometimes I feel like I need to have the right amount of surfaces and tools in order to make things I like. In every successful sit-down-and-work-on-a-project moment I need to have at least four other projects or distractions around me. On this day, I needed three pads of different paper, a picture of some fabric, and a cloth pizza pocket. Also important to my creative process is to constantly take inventory of all my tools and arranging them in aesthetically exciting ways. The popularity of this blog: http://thingsorganizedneatly.tumblr.com/ and the fanaticism around Wes Anderson movies leads me to believe that this is a muscle many people feel the need to exercise (a fun game is to list all the scenes in Wes Anderson films that are lists themselves. All his characters are always unpacking bags in orderly ways or rattling off descriptive indexes. Can we call this “list porn”?). What’s more fun than collecting and organizing stuff? I remember packing a spy kit as a kid and carefully including berry-flavored dental floss because it had the dual benefit of being both a dental hygiene product and a delicious snack. I recently allowed a few of my pre-school students to go through all the crayons and pick out all those without wrappers and put them in a separate container. They were absolutely itching to sort the clothed from the nude Crayolas. (Later I found a little pile of Crayon wrappers that had been freshly removed and left on the floor. Peeled Crayons have, I suppose, an addictive quality.) In reflecting on this human tick, is it any wonder that famous dictators often enjoy looking out at a sea of straight lines of carefully designed uniforms? Which reminds me - it’s important to note that I think there can be too much of an organized thing and this is why I haven’t cleaned my room in six months.