I proposed a fresh coat of paint for the house. My resident repair man agreed.
“If you clean out that closet, I will paint it,” he said as I stood in front of the linen closet which held every except linens.
I hauled out toys, crafts, notebooks and family mementos and lined the guest bedroom with the odds and ends.
“I meant our bedroom closet,” he said. “But, I’ll get that closet next.”
So, I emptied out slacks, skirts, shirts, suits, shoes, a pile of Christmas presents, tax returns and framed pictures. I filled up the craft room, the guest beds and end of the hall.
Looking around at all that stuff now cluttering a third of the house, I felt very thankful for closets. Even a small closet holds and hides a great deal of stuff.
I found my daughter’s long lost baby clothes, the calculus books I once puzzled over and a manual typewriter I saved in case I wanted to write during an electrical outage – only to never use it.
“I am not returning all these clothes to the closet,” I warned my husband. He tried on eight suits and donated more than half to the thrift store pile. I put it aside anything I had not worn in a year.
Even after filling up the trunk of my car, heaps of clutter still sprawled across the floors, the beds, the chairs and tables. As I waited for the paint to dry I realized how messy my house would look without closets.
I wound my way through the clutter to the computer and logged onto Facebook to write, “I have learned to be thankful for closets, they hold and cover up so much stuff … thank you, God, for closets.”
Our oldest son, Randy, having undergone a lengthy time sorting out the accumulation of years identified with the situation. He responded as follows.
I have found that if you aren’t careful, closets will get too full and things will start spilling out. Then you have a big mess that tends to get in the way of everything else that you are trying to do. People have been injured trying to navigate through the house, especially at night when the lights are out.
With closet clutter, you never want to have anybody around — they might look in your closets. That is a scary thought.
Scary enough that eventually you just stop having people over at all – and then you get lonely. When the loneliness gets to be very painful you aren’t able to keep up with the closet cleaning at all and the whole house falls into shambles.
Thank God for closets — but it is much better if you keep them clean. My closets got completely out of control. I had to get Someone else to come in and start cleaning them. I tried and tried to clean them – with no success. I finally admitted my utter failure and got help.
Thankfully, they have been helping me with my closet clutter – but it was quite expensive. There was no way I could afford it until Someone else saw my plight and mercifully paid the fee.
Now the one who paid thinks they own me.
I suppose they do. I talk to them everyday and I thank them for all that they have done. We still have a lot of work to do, but it is so good to see what they have already done.
My neighbors talk about my messy house quite a bit. I know they doubt I will be able to keep it clean.
They are probably right.
Don’t tell the neighbors, but that is exactly the reason I asked my benefactor if the cleaning service can just remain on board indefinitely.
He said that they could. Woohoo! Wow! OK!
It is frightening to consider, but it is time to open another dark, cluttered closet and see what we drag out into the light, he concluded.
A little closet cleaning helps immensely whether inside our house or inside our hearts.
“There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known.” Matthew 10:26 (NAS).
I found a place to store his thoughts and returned to my closet sorting task determined to conquer the clutter.
(Still sorting stuff, Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at joanh@everybody.org)