I don’t know why I bother. I watch those shows on HGTV and read the articles in magazines. I scour the Sunday ads to see who has the cheapest Rubbermaid totes and cutest stacking drawers. I empty entire closets, cabinets and attics in the name of getting organized and going to bed guilt-free.
Everything starts out labeled, color coordinated and neat. I hung decorative hooks on the kitchen wall for my children’s backpacks. They drop them on the floor. Directly below the cute hooks. On top of their shoes.
For which I provided a quaint container by recycling a wood box, which, in a former life, housed a case of French wine. My husband’s slippers look nice sitting right next to it.
Then there’s the hook for keys, the dog’s leash and mail to go out to the box. Score one for holding the dog’s leash. But the only keys on the pegs are from our house and a car we no longer own. Next to them sits negatives I was supposed to take to the store three months ago to make prints, an empty Holy Water bottle, a paint can lid (I liked the color), my iPod for jogging (I don’t jog) and the usual dust bunnies and dehydrated food particles.
I labeled a special Rubbermaid box in the pantry for opened cookies and crackers. Currently in this box there resides three miniature petrified raisins, a strand of used dental floss and a Dumb Dumb sucker stick.
I spent an hour emptying, refolding, organizing and restocking my daughter’s dresser with freshly laundered clothing. I gave her a personal guided tour of each drawer and stack. By the next morning there were library books in the sock drawer, a phone charger dangling out of the over stuffed T-shirt drawer and my brand new red cami wadded up with her pajamas.
I spent an entire weekend gutting her closet and installing new rods, shelves, cubbies and shoe racks. We paid three hundred bucks to take down the perfectly operational sliding doors and install new, hinged doors so she could open them wide and not only see, but access every thing in her highly organized closet.
She rearranged her furniture so the bed partially blocks the left closet door. I moved the bed, opened the doors wide and was immediately buried under an avalanche of mismatched shoes, never unpacked luggage from last summer and flesh-eating hangers.
My son’s desk drawers did manage to stay neat and organized for a couple months. Probably because he never opened them. Anything that needed to be put away simply landed on top of the desk, the desk chair and floor under the desk.
They say there’s a place for everything and everything in its place. And in my house there is. Just don’t get too excited when you open my pantry and find a container labled, “Cookies”.