The Door Won’t Shut
This morning, I wanted to clear out some clutter, and saw I had 2300 unread emails, which was shocking until I realized it was 23,000. I’m just too busy — thoroughly booked until bedtime. There’s a fire in my belly to do good before I’m gone. I feverishly sign online petitions to fight fracking, save whales and demand single payer health care for all. But what I really need to do is clean out my closet.
We’re all prisoners of our possessions, limited by aging tech items once meant to enrich us, locked into a lease for a tiny domain, chained to things that have outlasted their style and usefulness. I need to free myself.
Having been quite the New York City thrift shop girl, I’ve come to own a lot of clothing, over the years, and have accumulated many unique and fabulous items that, really, I can’t part with. But when my closet door won’t shut, I know it’s time to throw something out…soon. When I say throw something out, I don’t mean in the garbage. I can give it back to the thrift shop, put it out in my 9th floor garbage room or leave it on the street and it’s gone in 2 minutes. I like to think my stuff goes to a better place…where someone else actually uses it. Not that I ever get rid of anything. This is just hypothetically.
But that needs to change. Every time I walk through my entry hallway, into my main room, I have to push the closet door closed. The door pole bangs into the overstuffed hangers, so the door bounces back into my face and that hurts. I can’t have visitors, anymore. When I give a huge heave-ho, squeezing the clothes together and inward, hangers break and things fall. I double, triple and quadruple hang and still the door won’t shut.
A reasonable goal would be to keep only as many clothes as comfortably fit into my closet. But the problem is I have just one closet and I’m trying to get the most use of it I can. My boyfriend has the other one.
Being loosely aligned with the principles of feng shui, I’ve made space for another person. He barely uses his closet. It’s like half empty, but, still, I would never take his closet. Never. Really. It would be like telling the feng shui universe gods I don’t care about living with anyone else, which isn’t true. I do like company. Luckily, I’ve also got 2 armoires, though that’s still not enough for a diverse, adult wardrobe. I know it seems I’m a hoarder but I’m not. Definitely not. Well, probably not. Maybe I’m a semi-hoarder. All these hoarding shows have really given me an eyeful, in a painful kind of way. I watched one and was so horrified and panicked, I screamed and changed the channel. The lady whose frozen meat had turned blue and green was just so delusional and tragic. That’s not me. There is no blue-green meat under my bed. Not in my living room or even in my tiny freezer. I’m just holding onto a few select outfits others might discard because I’m a good saver.
“You can throw it out and regret it once or you can keep it and regret it every day,” one friend said. I choose the every day regret. Getting rid of stuff is too much like losing. Letting stuff go is too much like not having anything left.
I’d love to have a different, sleekly stylish outfit for every day of my life but I pretty much wear the same 7 or 8, week after week, changing them slowly, with each season. If I do the math: 7 or 8, times 4 seasons — I really don’t need more than 32, total. Ok, this sounds scientific and practical, but would mean an extensive downsizing.
It’s not easy to accomplish a cohesive outfit in the morning. If I turn on the lights, I wake my sleeping giant, who’s up all night working on his projects. So I just quietly grab whatever’s on the chair, in front of me, and put it on. Honestly, is a double-dipped outfit really so awful?
I know a lot of thought goes into this very personal process of getting dressed, all around the world, every day. But if I get up in the morning and there are clothes on the chair, from yesterday, it’s a small, sparing move to simply slip them on. Of course, my boyfriend sees me every day and thinks I’m impossibly lazy. But when I’ve created a particularly inspired, matching, seasonably appropriate and somewhat fashionable ensemble, why wear it once?
So many of my clothing items should be tossed. They just don’t exactly fit me in my “now” body. Why do I torture myself? They fit me last year or a few years ago, with my other bodies.
How can I calmly take things out of the closet, one by one, put them into 3 piles and delete? Or dump everything on a chair, so it’s half-way out, and keep 50%. Take a picture and then get rid of it! That would be progress. Do it and feel great! Ok. I will.
Today, I start shedding, by getting rid of some sandals I have actually never worn. They slide off with every step, but, man, they’re so sexy and colorful — pink, red and orange, woven together. Cute, cute, cute! I’m sure I could wear them for some special summer party, as long as there’s no music or dancing and I’m mostly sitting down, preferably right by the shrimp cocktail or salsa and chips. Of course, the whole point of a summer party is to dance your ass off with a bunch of strangers until you’re all drenched in sweat and joy! I could really use dancing shoes. When I find some, I’ll pass these on.
Here we go…That pink sweater set I haven’t worn in a few years — very simple, looks great, well more like ok, when I’m in a thin phase, but looks kinda junky when I’m in my middle weight. Right now, I’m a little above the middle, but not at my most expansive. I’ve been bigger, well, maybe by 2 or 3 pounds. Pink is good for my coloring but textured acrylic is full-on crappy looking. Why keep crap? It’s out. But at some future time, it may be right in the heart of fashion. Oh, I’ll just keep it until I don’t want it at all. I’ll tuck it, here, on the side of the front shelf. What can I say? It’s pink!
How about I toss that pair of black velveteen hip hugger jeans that kind of slide below the butt if I’m sitting down, even though they have such a groovy, bell-bottom leg, when standing. I could hide the slide with a long shirt. Why wear something that demands such finessing and focus? Well, retro 60’s is always in, and they’re only about 5 or 10 years old, or were these from high school? They’re like an old friend. I’ll just hang them up, under some other black pants, as “special-situation pants”.
Next! My great thrift store find — a silk long black dress, or jacket, I can’t tell, with thin, brightly-colored stripes, on a black background — retro-chic, circa 1965, very Cosmopolitan and sophisticated, but kinda boxy. I’ve never ever worn it. Oh, it still has the tags on it — good price! I’ll wear it, if I get skinny again, which I haven’t completely given up on. I’ll just put it, here, on the top shelf, side corner, opposite the pink sweater, peeking out at me…like a coy cat.
So I have special shoes for sitting, special pants for standing and a dress or jacket that looks good when the wind blows.
Why do I waste so much time clearing closet clutter? I’d rather sign online petitions to stop clitorectomies in Africa; end the slaughter and decimation of the entire African elephant species for profit; and fight international slavery! In the big scheme of things, what really matters is what you do, not what you have!
The real problem is I have no space to move. If I could send all my clothes to Haiti, to reduce their suffering, after the hurricanes, I’d be motivated.
No, wait — the real problem is we’re in a world full of people and creatures suffering every day. But instead of sharing my wealth and helping them, I endlessly cram stuff in my closet. I want to develop my humanity but there are so many distractions. How do I achieve anything worthwhile? I’d thrive more if I helped more people to suffer less. But the more I try, the more I fail; and the more I fail, the more I suffer. The more I suffer, the more clothes I buy, to cheer myself up. It’s very disappointing. The task is too large. Clearly, I’d feel better if I created more space for peace. More space for peace. Yes. I might as well just…clean out my closet.
