I am organizationally challenged.
Oh sure, you laugh. But being organizationally challenged is
serious. So serious that there are people on this earth whose life
mission is to organize people like me.
And my mother is one of those people.
I am organizationally challenged.
Oh sure, you laugh. But being organizationally challenged is serious. So serious that there are people on this earth whose life mission is to organize people like me.
And my mother is one of those people.
My mother is the complete opposite of me. In my mother’s home, everything has a place and you had better believe that everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – is in that place.
That includes my father.
Dad’s space is on the left side of the couch in the family room.
I have never seen him sit on the loveseat or the chair. He only sits in the left corner of the couch. It is his place. And that is where he stays.
Unless it’s dinnertime. Then he goes to the head of the table. But after that, it’s back to his left-side corner.
When I was a child we never left the house without making our beds.
Our clothes went from the dryer, to the folding table, to the closet in 2.3 seconds. The clothes were still warm, for Pete’s sake, when I put them away.
And the kitchen was an organizer’s dream of heaven, I’m sure. The bowls were stacked neatly, according to size and color. The glasses were in straight little rows, according to type.
For me, it was a nightmare.
First of all, who the heck has that kind of time? Organizing bowls and glasses takes a certain dedication – and I sure don’t have it. Oh, I’ve tried.
Actually, my mother has tried to organize me many times.
And each time I live with beautiful cabinets and closets for a short while – until my inner dysfunctional, disorganized demons take over and soon the closets are overflowing with stuff that doesn’t belong in them.
It’s not that I don’t want to be organized, I do. It’s just that home organization works against me. I have really bad clean closet mojo. Seriously.
Take the last time mom tried to organize me, for example.
One bright spring day, my mom arrived at my house carrying a huge box of Hefty bags. She dragged me – kicking AND screaming, thank you very much – into my closet, and then she tossed out most of my clothes. Needless to say, I was a little ticked. Some of those clothes still fit.
After that, my mom attacked my shoes. About then I was really ticked. ALL of those fit.
But mom tossed with abandon. Then she took her truck full of Hefty bags and drove to the Salvation Army.
And right at that very moment, in New York City, some fashion designer brought back the clothing of the 80’s.
You have three guesses as to where all my 80’s fashions were – and I’ll give you a hint: They were no longer in my closet.
That right there should illustrate the folly of being organized. I would have had all the newest fashions in my closet, and I wouldn’t have spent one dime to buy them.
Okay, sure I had gained about a bazillion pounds since 1987 – but hey, the shoes still fit. And anyway, I would have had the latest fashions for free.
The worst part was, my mother’s hard work didn’t even pay off. By late summer my closet was the same disorganized space it had been before my mother had wiped the 80’s from my life.
Oh sure, mom had tried. When she left, clothes were hanging up, organized according to type and sleeve length. The rest were sitting on their shelves, neatly folded.
Well, heck, for a person like me, that’s like living in the Twilight Zone. After a week, I couldn’t remember what went where.
And I couldn’t find anything either. The closet organizers were too tall. And I lost the step stool that mom gave me so I could reach the tallest nooks and crannies of my closet.
I think it got swallowed up one day by the giant disorganized mess of boxes that I call a garage.
But I have learned one thing from my bad closet mojo. Never, ever open a closet door without ducking. You never know what will come out and attack you.
