You know those mornings when you wake up, looking around at the mayhem you created the night before when you ripped through your closet trying to find the tshirt/jeans/missing sock that you knew was buried somewhere in the rubble of unfolded laundry? If you are anything like my former self, you may have rolled over, pulled the covers over your head and berated yourself for your shortcomings. And for the mess lurking behind the closet doors, the stuff you piled in there when impromptu company arrived last week then you never quite got around to pulling back out. You may have told yourself that once you felt better, more motivated and less depressed, that you would clean up the mess and By George, you’d have your clothes sorted and organized once and for all. Soon. Once you felt better.
Through much closet searching and an equivalent amount of soul searching I’ve since discovered something rather remarkable. An epiphany, if you will. It was like the time I realized that I could, in fact, fold my towels differently than I had done my entire life without something terrible happening (call me superstitious, or perhaps a little off balance). What I discovered was that I could, like the folding of the towels, step out of my comfort zone and embrace change and chaos at the same time. And so I did. I cleaned out my closet. And then I cleaned out another. This led me to the bathroom cabinets where I cleaned out all the old half dried bottles of shampoo and hair products (and the gimped up Q-tips lurking in the back of the “everything drawer”). An hour later I was cross-legged on the hallway floor sorting through boxes of miscellaneous “one day” items, most of which ended up either at the bottom of a glad bag or in a box marked “pass-it-on”. Before too long my bookcase was finally organized by author, my cups and glasses were on separate shelves in the cupboard and my hope-chest beside my bed had become a hope-chest again instead of a store-all. And with each task I took on I felt, well…I felt better. More motived. Less depressed.
Nowadays, when I begin to feel bogged down, when the clutter around me creates noise inside of me, I remind myself of that remarkable discovery. I know that chaos will always be a part of who I am. I embrace it because it isn’t going anywhere. In keeping with that I have a junk drawer in my kitchen that is overflowing with the items I haven’t found a home for or that I can’t bear to part with quite yet. There is still a lot of improvement to be made, “A place for everything and everything in it’s place”. But I know one thing for certain. I know that chaos won’t determine what my surroundings look like. When I feel a maelstrom building, ready to overwhelm me, there is something I can do about it.
I clean out my closets.
Blissful Bedlam 