On Getting Organized

I always threw things into my chaotic hall closet and then shut the door without looking. It did not help my policy of denial that the closet was located right in the entryway of my flat and did not latch well. A man I was dating at one time once casually opened the door and peered in. "It's your unconscious mind," he joked. I ran towards him, stomping my feet as if to shoo an animal, and shouted that he had better get the hell out of there, and mind his own damned business, if he wanted our relationship to last.

My problems with untidiness began in childhood, with adult fingers wagging in my young face as far back as I could remember, and stern words about "cleaning up." A therapist I saw in my twenties pointed out pointed the adults were rigid. It made sense that I had not wanted to be "good," not when it meant towing their line. I took in her insight, but needed many more years to grow up enough that I quit rebelling.

At around thirty, I finally felt flush enough to rent a place all to myself. When I was going to have somebody over for dinner, in those days, it took me all morning, and much of the afternoon to get ready. I washed dishes, I folded clothes. I made my bed, I stacked my books and papers. I dusted and I scrubbed. Because it took me all day to get ready for guests, I did not have people over very often.

"It's my place," I told myself. "I live here alone, I do not have to clean up for anyone." It was "just me," helplessly watching the plug of hair accumulate in the drain in my filthy bathtub. It was "just me," feeling demoralized when I looked around at my home, and it was not a place of welcome or comfort.

I was 37 and the rationalizations were sounding increasingly hollow. This was not how I wanted to live.

The light of transformation, still a pin-prick at the end of the tunnel, first appeared in November, 2002. In an infrequent bid to tidy my coffee table, I was opening accumulated mail. I opened what turned out to be a very nasty letter from my bank. It said I owed them hundreds of dollars in interest and penalties, because I had overdrawn my account, forgetting that money would not automatically be drawn from savings to cover the checks.

I had enough money in savings to cover the back checks, interest, and penalties. This injury to my pride and my credit score was a household management issue, alone.

It really seemed I'd hit a wall. Things had gotten as bad, as humiliating, as they could, on account of my housekeeping. I sank to the floor, covering my face with my arms. For a moment, I just stewed. Then I shot to my feet, prepared to turn over a new leaf.

I knew if I wanted to avoid embarrassments like the bank fiasco in the future, I needed to open each and every piece of mail when it came in the door. I started doing that faithfully.

Two months went by. Heartened by the way the surfaces in my apartment started showing when I stopped accumulating mail, I thought about my hall closet. The thought of stepping into that abyss, and successfully organizing it, was almost too grand, too ambitious. I did not want to fail again.

The next thing I knew, that afternoon, I was inside that closet, pitching its contents out into the livingroom.

There was antiquated stereo equipment. There were all manner of strange clothes, and shoes I had not seen since college. There was bedding, there were hammers, pliers, vacuum cleaner bags, window screens, cushions, and I didn't know I had so many extension cords or telephone cables, or so much string. I spent a long time that day just untangling the cords, coiling them neatly, and fastening them with twist ties.

I asked myself, in the future, could I routinely coil and fasten cords before storing them? Would that be a sustainable habit to acquire? I didn't have to listen hard for the answer, which was yes, of course.

As I wound cords that day, I began to sort the objects from the emptied closet into three piles on my living-room floor: "giveaway," "throwaway," "keep." When deciding how to classify an object, I thought about a criterion I once heard for this kind of sorting: if it doesn't enhance your life, get rid of it. That helped me enormously.

At dusk, I phoned Salvation Army for a pickup. Then I started to apply myself to the problem of organizing the possessions I'd held onto. Again, I listened to my insides: I'd store items I used frequently towards the front of the closet, and items I used infrequently towards the back.

At bedtime, I sat on the couch. I blinked. I had an orderly, working hall closet I knew I could keep that way.

People who do a lot of yoga describe exquisite attunement to their bodies, a conscious rapport with their muscles, bones, tendons, and nerves that is almost a dialog. "This hurts. Do I push into the discomfort, or back off? Back off a little." "Can I turn my head far enough to gaze at my arm? Relax and concentrate; we'll get there." Cleaning and organizing my home that January, and strategizing to keep it that way, I became keenly aware of that meditative state, a sort of focused gentleness. I thought up many ideas for keeping order that I quickly abandoned, because to my intuition, they seemed excessive, or just not right. I was not going to make my bed every day. But doing the dishes each evening, and folding the bath mat after each use, I was utterly confident I could manage. And I have.

The changes in my housekeeping, made in kindness, feel rock-solid to me, years on. I have never once worried about slipping into old habits, as I fold my clothes and put them away after I take them off. These and other little tasks are so easy, they take so little energy, I hardly think of them as chores. I hardly think of them at all.

I can have people over, because all I have to do to get ready is tidy a little, vacuum, and make the bed. That's it. No last-minute heroics, no drama.

Do I keep my place fastidiously? No, that's not me. But I am also not a slob, not anymore. At heart, I never really was.