Pages

Sunday, August 19, 2018

The Purge, Part 7

It occurs to me at this late date I should have subtitled all these posts. Oh well.

Okay, so this probably wasn't a great idea for getting all the things done I want done, but the truth is I never expected it to take as long as it did. I thought a couple hours one afternoon and then I would move on to greater heights. How wrong I was.

What am I talking about?

I purged my hanging clothes. I thought it would be easy. It was not easy.

When last we met here, I had cleaned the laundry room and decided the obvious next step was to clean the upstairs bathroom and purge a few toy bins. It made sense to prioritize a few smaller tasks to make housekeeping maintenance easier. However my motivation for those particular tasks was low. After spinning my wheels for several days, I decided it was stupid to let time slip by while procrastinating the things I did not want to do, and I should do another large task that I wanted to do. I looked towards my closet, which has been a source of crammed, wrinkled angst, and thought I will purge my clothes this afternoon. And so I began.


After I got all my clothes out of the closet, I realized I had probably made a big mistake. This job was going to take more than an afternoon.

Let us catalog all the ways purging your closet is not a fun activity:
  • How do you try on clothes while wearing a baby? You don't.
  • How do you decide if you like the item you tried on while the baby screams on the floor? You can't.
  • How do you know if this shirt is still relatively fashionable when you absolutely remember wearing it just a few years ago? Or maybe that was a decade ago? When *did* I last wear this?
  • How do you figure out if these pants are worth keeping even though they don't fit right now, but will probably fit in six months? Maybe? Unless the slowest possible weight loss while still being able to detect weight loss rate of a pound every six weeks stops altogether. What *do* I do with this pile of pants? 

  • How do you decide which old favorites to let go because they have seen better days while suppressing the urge to re-imagine them as quilts? Even though you don't sew!
  • How do you keep from imagining possible scenarios of use for every single item you find?
  • How do you decide between this shirt and that similar shirt? Or if you should keep the skirt that has no matching shirt but you love it? Or if this shirt in the great color that should be cute but maybe the cut looks odd on you is worth the closet space? Or maybe the cut doesn't look odd? Maybe it's your own perception? How do you know?!?

  • How do you make these decisions without some person, knowledgeable about the issues and sympathetic to the cause, sitting there metaphorically patting you while listening to you natter on like a neurotic?
  • How do you even meet people willing to do that? How might I acquire one? 
  • How does Facebook decide that you shouldn't even have access to the virtual world of advice by helpfully refusing to show your pleas for assistance to more than single digit numbers of people in groups with dozens of members?
Where was I?

Oh yes, the closet. 

After a long and cranky week in which my clothes were spread all over the downstairs in ginormous piles and several existential crises, I filled an entire diaper box overflowing with discards from my clothes closet. 



After. Yes, I know it looks almost exactly the same as the before, but it's different. Believe me, it's different.
I probably didn't purge enough, but I did the best I could. Now on to the rest of the closet! Surely it won't take more than a few days, right? 

I have two weeks now before school has to start. I want the kitchen reorganized. I know for certain that large job will not happen when my attention turns to school so it has to happen soon. I also have to organize all the school books and, um, plan the school year. I am also teaching a music class twice a month to three different age groups. The room to procrastinate that little planning task is shrinking fast. A complication is that outside obligations are beginning to take their slices of time since pretty much everyone else around here has started school.

As a result, my room is probably not going to be touched, but if the closet is made functional, I might be able to work on my room in fits and starts after school is in full swing. After I finish the closet, I will move to the kitchen. The end of the summer is in sight. 

Ella, chewing furniture


No comments: