There are a total of seven closets in my house. Of those seven, three are in the hallway. The first is a coat closet, which contains all the normal coat closet things like hats, mittens, the vacuum cleaner and, of course, coats. There are, at last count, twenty-three coats in that closet and yes, I wear them all. Well, except for that high school letterman’s jacket but you just hush, you know it’s cool.
The closet on the other end of the hallway is a linen closet because, shocking, it is right outside the bathroom. Not that you need this detail but in this closet are sheets, towels (more beach towels than regular towels. What? Yes, I know I live in Colorado and we do not have a beach. You just hush, again) and all those bathroom-y things that seem to collect over the years. I think you have this too, right? Because at one point in time, and maybe this is still true, it was super cool to get fifty different kinds of lotion from Bath and Body Works for your birthday. And at some point even though these were all very nice you just stopped wanting to smell like Wisteria and Lavender and just wanted to smell like yourself. So the lotions maybe stacked up. Or the shampoo, or the soap or those odd gifts you’d get from your grandmother that you didn’t know what to do with so you saved them there, in the closet, next to the spare bathmat.
The third closet, is the sporting goods/miscellaneous closet. This is where I keep all the backpacks and hydration packs and things that make me feel sporty, like cO2. (For bike tires, of course.) This closet is also the memory closet where I keep things I cannot, will not ever part with so don’t even ask. Which brings me to my real point today: I have a lot of stuff. I keep a lot of stuff. Most of it is for sentimental reasons, and I’m not entirely comfortable saying so. I’d planned to write about cleaning my closet and how I got rid of nearly seventy pieces of clothing over the weekend, but then I read Egan’s post, which struck a chord in me. I don’t have clutter in my house now, but because I see a chance for it, because I keep things. I am a keeper. The thing is, I do know it about myself. And I know that as much as I still love those jeans from college, I generally can convince myself that I love clean, organized things better.
So my solution: Closet cleaning “parties.” Oh yes, you read that right. Parties. I am lucky enough to have a couple friends that will tolerate this so about once a year, I invite them over, feed them chips and salsa, dump margaritas down their throats and ask them to please help me part with things I a) do not need and/or b) should not be wearing any more because, oh my gosh, girl when was the last time you saw anyone wearing button-down camp shirts? I was so very, very cool.
This project, luckily, is successful. I think this is true because I know I need to downsize. I know I need to get rid of things I don’t use and will not miss. And planning this, as crazy as it sounds, prepares me for it. Yes, I need mental preparation to part with a pair of linen dress pants that make me look bloated and STILL HAVE THE TAG ON THEM. I know how this sounds. It sounds irrational, which is the awkward part for me. What’s great, though, is that I end up with a lot of spare hangers. So, I can go to Target like usual and find more things to… you know, hang up.
What’s probably even better about this for me and everyone around me is that it reminds me of what I’m capable of. Yes, here we go with the crazy talk again. Really, though, it does; I know I like to keep things yet I know I should not. So I pick the right friends and the right amount of margarita to help me. Because I know my personality, I know that I’m an emotional, sentimental girl that can look at a pair of flip flops and have the entire summer of 2002 come back to me. That is just how I work. But what I also know, in that small corner that is the rational part of my mind, is that throwing out those five-year-old flip flops does not mean I’m throwing out the memory. It just means- if I may be a little trite- that I’m making room for more.
Which is what I did last weekend. This photo above is one of two huge piles of clothing I parted with mere days ago. Look closely, that second pair of jeans in there, those are Express jeans that I bought my sophomore year of college. Those are the jeans I was wearing the first time a boy played a song for me. Those are the jeans I was wearing when one day, sitting in class, I gazed off and realized this was probably the first time in my adult life that I was in love, or what I was certain was adult love, anyway. Those jeans are now at the Goodwill along with all the other things my friends/sister/mother did not want. But that memory, well clearly that’s not at the Goodwill.
So what do you keep?
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