Deborah Cooke: Author

This week, I’m having a stay-cation. Of course, I can’t completely stay away from the computer (or the internet!) but I’m focusing on things other than writing and publishing this week. Job one is to weed the garden and get the delivered mulch into the beds.

Job two is to clean out closets. Ugh.

We’ve had a lot of stuff arriving at our house in the last couple of years. Both of our parents have moved out of the houses they lived in for a long time. My parents downsized, while Mr. Math’s mom passed away and his dad went into care. Both sets of parents had a bunch of stuff they didn’t need or want any more, and a bunch of it (a LOT of it!) came here. In the hustle and bustle of getting people resettled, it didn’t all get sorted out as it arrived. Some did, and I actually think we did pretty well. Dishes were sorted in real time, and so were most clothes. A lot of stuff got shoved into closets to just get it out of the way. Some of it is/was sentimental; much of it just required more of a plan than we had at the time. In some cases, we ended up with two (or even three) of some household item but only need one. Which one should we keep?

Last winter, Mr. Math began a big sort of what had ended up in the basement. That’s ongoing, but it’s his department. There are boxes of old pictures, for example, but those are going to take time.

What spurred me on to sort the rest was a garage sale that we stopped to check out a few weeks ago. By strange and unusual coincidence, there was a lot of stuff for sale similar to what I had in the closets upstairs. Hmm. I realized that if we had a garage sale, it would look much the same. Much of the stuff at that sale had come from the house of someone who had died – hmm, again. I realized I was standing at the yard sale of my life. (Yes, there was yarn, and sewing patterns, too.) I didn’t shop that day – I came home, eyeballed the closets and made a plan.

This week, I’m doing the big sort and reclaiming our closet space. The new arrivals are being scrutinized. I will choose the one soup tureen that gets to stay. On the way, other things are being reviewed. The three year rule is being put into play for clothes – anything unworn for three years (with exceptions for formal wear) goes into the Do You Really Need This pile. Plus stashes of all varieties are being reviewed.

The Queen Bee is not much for this activity. She seems to suspect that we might be moving, and is keeping pretty close tabs on both of us. Boxes are getting thoroughly reviewed at regular intervals.

Despite the canine supervision – or maybe because of it! – I already have two huge bags and a box packed for the thrift shop. Progress have been made and closets are being cleaned. Ha.

And of course, nature abhors a vacuum – when I took some R&R, I ordered a couple of knitting books. They’ll squeeze nicely into the new gaps.

That means that stuff goes and stuff comes, too.

How about you? Do you keep your closets perfectly clean, sorting all the time, or do you periodically have to do a big cleaning, like me?