Each year I go through the ritual of purging my wardrobe as I prepare to start back to teaching. And, at least once every year, I am sorely reminded of one the talents I lack and am occasionally jealous of those who possess. I’m talking about organization.
I want to be organized. I really do. And, I believe I share this sentiment with more than just my best friend, who has been tearing out and passing along chapters from a book entitled Secrets of a Professional Organizer as she finishes with them herself.
The exercise has helped some, I admit, but what has been accomplished most is that I am more vigilant for opportunities to apply some of the techniques suggested. One thing I learned is that each of us already has a sense of organization. We don’t have to radically change our system to be like some one else’s, but rather learn how to adjust our own.
By getting to know how we are organized from the inside out, and not changing who we are from the outside in, we get to know ourselves a bit better in the process. I know that the observing nature I have doesn’t allow me to linger sometimes, and I create a pile to return to as my attention wanders to the next encounter of my senses. When I return, no matter when that is, I can usually pick up where I left off with little trouble. This happens in my classroom and it happens with my writing. It also happens around my home.
A lesson I learned about the latter is that every room can call for its own sense of order. For example, my bedroom moans to me each time the closet and the dresser become overstuffed with shirts, socks and shoes, and short and long pants, burgeoning during the transition seasons, especially when fall is impending, though it is only August. Call the complaint “The Back to School Blues.”
Parting with clothing that is still functional, even though it may go to a charitable organization for possible recycling, has never been easy for me. It’s hard to part with something I may still convince myself I have use for.
But, turning over a wardrobe does have its healthy effect. “The fresh start” and “the new look” hold such a sense of promise and optimism. We feel energized when we wear an outfit for the first time. A power of positivity overcomes us and we can hardly wait to share ourselves with others. Confidence and power seem to build with every step we take in our new duds.
Another room in my house that has its own personality and its specific demands for order is my writer’s room. Nearly everyone has a drawer or two in their homes where things are hastily stuffed. Sometimes it is during a mad panic to straighten up before company arrives and a surface simply must be cleared in short order. Other times, it’s that we don’t exactly know where to put that letter we’ve been rereading or the souvenir we’ve been keeping out to look at once more. I have one such drawer in my writer’s room.
At times during the course of a year, I will open the drawer as fast as a blink to toss in some tidbit or scrap or memento that I intend to get out later to ponder. On one such occasion, I became attracted to the array of stuff that appeared when the drawer was cracked only a few inches. My mind began to wander to all the occurrences that had produced such a jumble of what some folks might say is junk. But one man’s junk. . . .
As I began to catalogue the memories, the idea occurred to me to write some of them down. Then I thought, no, don’t write the memories. Just write down the objects and let the audience identify with some of the listing and conjure up their own correlations. Let the poem be the impetus to find your own drawer to contemplate.
Sometimes a journey through a drawer can lead us to rediscover pleasant times, kind faces, and untold wealth. Who needs order in a drawer whose sole purpose is surprise, discovery, and inspiration?!
Spring Cleaning
Life comparmentalized in drawers–
micro-biographies of discards, get-to’s and save-these:a smattering of tattered snapshot, neglected notes,
a small vault of keys without locks, tack-pins for lost causes,
a keep of obsolete receipts, a cache of collectible coins;defunct phone numbers, broken-pointed pencils.
one dead AA, a hoarded pen hardened in the artery,
an assembly of unused parts, assorted cards from the kids–forgotten remembrances: a tomb for trash and heirlooms;
sepulcher of treasure awaiting disposal or resurrection.
- Michael J Hoover