* * *
A current snapshot: my closet is a playground. A post-explosion scene. A rumpus room. Shoes have been wrestling with each other; finding a matching pair involves "digging." The "dirty" clothes threaten to avalanche on the next hapless victim to walk by, though he/she would have warning since the majority of the spill oozes out onto the floor of my bedroom. The shelf of sweaters and t-shirts are hanging over my head like half-melted glaciers...waiting to bust off and add to the mess below. This, after "going through" my clothes and trucking a bunch off to Goodwill. This, after crating up a majority of "off-season" clothes and shoving the boxes under my bed.
I'm not the neatest person I know, but then I'm not exactly hacking my way through ceiling-high piles of ephemera with a machete just to get to the bathroom to pee, either. Hey, I've got a hamper you know. I think it's the same one I've owned since I was a teenager, and the included pivoting lid has since given up and disappeared. The problem is just that it fills up quicker than my four-week allotment of underwear. Yes, that's the gauge. I've purchased enough freds to keep me from doing laundry for four weeks. Unfortunately, it turns out that the bigger clothes render my hamper useless after two weeks.
Never fear, though. At the four-week mark, the laundry gets done, somehow there is a shelf and a hanger for everything and the shoes get paired back up and at one glance, the sequined Chucks can be located. I can even shut the door. Not bad for someone lacking a dresser. Problem is, as the weekdays creep by, and I'm either happy to shed my clothing onto the floor at the end of the weeknight or rustle through the clean stuff before the crack of dawn, there it goes again.
I guess the best way to see how my closet relates to me, is how I've seen my life so far. I'm wandering along, neat and tidy and ordered, and gradually there's a sweater avalanche, then there's chaos. I ignore it, then kick through it, dig for a shoe, wallow in it so to speak, and then one day, walk in and, "JEEZ," clean it up. Eventually I'm back to neat and tidy and ordered. Until the next sweater avalanche hits.
Which has got me thinking...why wouldn't I just keep it neat and tidy and ordered? Maybe the Universe will thank me with a neat and tidy and ordered life, for a bit longer than four weeks worth of underpants.
I'm not the neatest person I know, but then I'm not exactly hacking my way through ceiling-high piles of ephemera with a machete just to get to the bathroom to pee, either. Hey, I've got a hamper you know. I think it's the same one I've owned since I was a teenager, and the included pivoting lid has since given up and disappeared. The problem is just that it fills up quicker than my four-week allotment of underwear. Yes, that's the gauge. I've purchased enough freds to keep me from doing laundry for four weeks. Unfortunately, it turns out that the bigger clothes render my hamper useless after two weeks.
Never fear, though. At the four-week mark, the laundry gets done, somehow there is a shelf and a hanger for everything and the shoes get paired back up and at one glance, the sequined Chucks can be located. I can even shut the door. Not bad for someone lacking a dresser. Problem is, as the weekdays creep by, and I'm either happy to shed my clothing onto the floor at the end of the weeknight or rustle through the clean stuff before the crack of dawn, there it goes again.
I guess the best way to see how my closet relates to me, is how I've seen my life so far. I'm wandering along, neat and tidy and ordered, and gradually there's a sweater avalanche, then there's chaos. I ignore it, then kick through it, dig for a shoe, wallow in it so to speak, and then one day, walk in and, "JEEZ," clean it up. Eventually I'm back to neat and tidy and ordered. Until the next sweater avalanche hits.
Which has got me thinking...why wouldn't I just keep it neat and tidy and ordered? Maybe the Universe will thank me with a neat and tidy and ordered life, for a bit longer than four weeks worth of underpants.
