O is for ...

... organize.

Let's get organized!

Ah, friends, can a battlecry be more inspiring?

We shall get together, work together, defeat our enemies together, figure it out together, clear our clutter together!

Ah, fine, border battles of yore have now been replaced by battles over closet space but you see where I'm going, right - we must get organized!

So, get organized I did.   My organizational spasm had me living through clothes on my dining table, garbage bags in my den and an overall sense of overwhelmed and exasperated for about three weeks (I really dislike stop/start projects, but there was no choice!).  I will confess that I'm not an unorganized person at all, everything is always neat and clean and in its' proper place - before / after photos of my closets & drawers, had I taken them, would have been completely undistinguishable - the issue for me was the actual possibility that my closets & drawers were going to combust or revolt in protest over their 'over-stuffed-ness'. That I was going to combust or revolt in protest of my 'over-squished-ness'.  I simply have a ton of stuff.  I keep things.  I keep buying things.  I don't have space for these things.  Things like, every things, from clothes to towels to undergarments in every colour and sheets and trinkets and maps of foreign cities which I hope to go to again and of course need the same map I used before and random stationary and magazines with one great article that I will never reread to cables and instruction manuals and original boxes and years worth of Christmas Cards and the list goes on and on and on and on. 

Ah, fuck, do you see the problem?!  I'm a high end hoarder with compulsive buying disease! 

I had to clear my place of the no longer useful and take an inventory of what was actually in these closets and drawers, so I could put my brain on notice:  stop buying stuff!  You don't need more stuff!  I conducted a very trying self - interrogation with, um, myself during this process: How many sets of sheets does one person need - you only have one bed!!?!  Are you REALLY going to refer to this instruction manual when your TV doesn't work?!  How many pairs of pants that no longer fit do you need in your closet?!  So, this box that your sunglasses came in, you're keeping it why?!  I was not very sympathetic with me.  Things were tossed, others donated, some recyled.  In the end, I STILL HAVE A TON OF STUFF, but I'd like to think that now the ton of stuff I have is useful and necessary (yes, even my 14 white Tshirts because they are all different in their own special way).  I hope not to have a minor melt down in six months time when I'm looking for a purse and discover a purse that I forgot I actually owned (true story. very embarrassing. but sort of like shopping without spending money?.).  I hope to become the city's greatest philanthropist with all the money I now have because I'm not spending all my money ON STUFF.  I hope to be more sensible (but not with shoes.  this isn't a draconian regime of suffering and utter non-spending people.).  Most of all, though, I hope to continue this trend of keeping what's important and discarding what's not, both on the insides and outsides of my overstuffed life.

Ah, for now I see, could this be what being organized is all about?