The Closet

I believe that there are two types of closets: the kind that is for general storage and is only rarely opened for any purpose other than rare ones and the kind that sees everyday use. The second kind, I think, is a very difficult part of the house to keep neat and organized, partly because it can be a lot of work, partly because it's the very last step in the laundry process (and thus easiest to say, "eh, forget it" to), and partly because you can always just close the door and not see the mess. I'm notorious for creating a messy bedroom closet, mostly because of the second reason and partly because of the third. Because I suck at keeping my side of the closet clean, my wife has sacrificed the neatness of her side to try to keep up with my side for the last several months (not to mention the ridiculous number of hours of chores we seem to do around the house every day, roughly seven combined total, to keep up with the regular stuff, provide nutritious food for the family, and to even make a dent in the aftereffects of the walking disasters that the teenagers are -- I mean, really, does everything they eat have to be on a new plate that they probably won't wash or even rinse and will either leave in their rooms or under a chair or bring to the kitchen and stack on top of things that make the whole situation look twice as bad as it is... and why is milk so hard to rinse out of a cup, seriously?). Today, I decided to settle the score.

Actually, I decided it about two weeks ago, but I haven't had the opportunity to act on it until now. I'm really a good organizer when I can be convinced to try to organize anything. In fact, I'm a bit too good at it, bordering a bit on being o.c.d. when I start projects like this. That's part of why it's rare that I do it. In any case, today I got down to business and started to pull out all of the things that had fallen to the floor, been stuffed in bags, or been hastily shoved in the closet when the room suddenly needed to be used for something that required it to at least look clean (my dad used to call cleaning by shoving things in the closet "putting frosting on s**t," a descriptor that I find apt and hilarious to this day). It took a few hours, but now not only is my side neat and tidy, but hers is too -- her dresses are with her dresses, her skirts are with her skirts, her blouses are with her blouses, her t-shirts are with her t-shirts, etc. I limited my attempt to those things because usually I'd have organized them by colors and style as well, meaning in each clothing type category, they'd be broken down according to style (which is way more complicated for women's clothing than it is for men's) and then each style category would be organized by color so that they all went in the same order (black things, gray things, white things, red things, other warm colors things, green things, blue things, other). Seriously, I'm a bit o.c.d. about organizing when I can be talked into doing it.

What I discovered is that when we switched bedrooms not so terribly long ago, at least one bag or box of clothing seems to have disappeared (I found several socks without matches and I know that the bag/box of clothing that is missing would have been mostly socks). That's interesting enough, but the extra hour I spent searching the house for it and not finding it made it a real curiosity. I guess life has to have its mysteries, even when it's just a box of missing socks.

Oh, and I'm certain that there are many missing socks (not a few from the laundry). I remember entire pairs that just aren't to be found anymore. Maybe the kids ate them or something. Who knows?

For now, I'm going to stop looking and start getting things ready for dinner. I'm making them homemade tomato-basil soup (with fresh tomatoes and basil from the garden) with noodles from scratch and Italian sausage (from the store). It's going to be gooooooooood!