True Confessions of a Recovering Packrat

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Written by Luanne Burns Goldrich

We were building our dream house on the oceanfront; we were expecting our first baby; we had moved to a new state and my husband had started a new career. We took photographs of the house in its various stages of becoming our home -- I with my expanding belly standing beside it. It was a race to see if the baby or the house would be finished first. The house won but only by about a week. What that meant was that the "moving-in" stage consisted of hastily unpacking boxes, stashing things away quickly, and building a façade of order while chaos existed behind the scenes. Indeed, the only room that was organized was the baby's.

After the baby arrived, organizing the house was put on the back burner; my thoughts turned to cooing, nursing, and reveling, albeit sleepily, in new motherhood. And actually, the house looked ok; visitors wouldn't have guessed the stashed disarray that lurked behind every closet door and in every cabinet and drawer. In my denial, I convinced myself it wasn't that bad.

Then came news of another pregnancy, this one more difficult than the first and, with a toddler to manage as well, organizing the house slipped way down on my "rainy-day" activities list. The new baby arrived and, six months later, when life finally settled down, I could stand it no longer. Two additional people and all their "stuff" to manage as well was too much for my façade. I was forced to face the entropy monster and began my battle to conquer it. Upon closer investigation I realized I was in over my head. I needed a professional; I needed help.

I frantically turned to the yellow pages (which it took some time to find) and looked under "organizing." Voila! There it was, Clearly Organized! That's what I needed; it was an answer to prayer. In desperation I called; I left a message; a half hour later I called again and said I was "so clearly in a mess that I needed to get clearly organized ASAP." Shortly thereafter, I heard the voice of Florence Feldman, the clearly-together founder and owner of Clearly Organized, and I knew there was hope.

Florence (Flo) arrived at my house and, like a patient who tries to read the doctor's eyes to see if the diagnosis is frightening, I watched her as she strode around, disclosing all my untidy secrets. Phew! She didn't faint or walk out or, heaven forbid, laugh at me. Instead, she revealed five organizing truths/secrets.

Organizing Secrets:

She arrived the second and subsequent times ready to tackle my house. Room-by-room, closet-by-closet, drawer-by-drawer, we hauled out, discussed, threw out, gave away, and brought order out of anarchy. I won't claim it was always easy...she'd bring out items one at a time (was that quilt from my husband's great Aunt Mildred or my Aunt Martha?) and really make me think about how important it was to keep it.

I learned to trade off the burden of false sentimentality, the "in-case-I-might-need-it-sometime" attitude, and freeing up important and livable storage space. We really didn't need all those sets of dishes or the bedding we had in college or five years worth of old magazines that we never looked at anyway. And all those washed out chicken cartons from Boston Market, when was I really ever going to use them?

She confirmed that Tupperware cabinets really are unruly (do you store the lids on the containers or keep them in separate baskets?), that lone socks need a small basket on the drier in case it coughs them up sometime in the future, and that spice cabinets do make it difficult to locate whatever spice you need at that moment. It's always good to have your struggles validated. She helped me part with those boots I had in college, the clothes I hadn't worn in years (and would look silly in now anyway), and carted away all my wire hangers as if they were the source of all closet ailments.

My new closets brimmed with all new, white plastic hangers. My pantry shelves were more accessible and labeled. My paper clips and rubber bands were behaving in their own allotted space in my office and I could locate important documents in my file cabinet again. My spices were alphabetized and laying flat in a drawer with all their labels facing up. Flo didn't miss a thing; she came back again and again until my house was lean and mean and whipped into organized shape. I even had space left-over!

We packrats desperately clutch and cling for reasons that seem valid, but I will admit, once I started letting things go, it felt great! I am a recovering packrat and every now and then I notice the entropy monster on my doorstep. But, because of Clearly Organized, I am armed to fight. I don't need professional help anymore; I am able to apply the theories Flo taught me in a practical manner to keep chaos at bay. A funny side-effect of organizing your house is that you get better at organizing your life too. Flo not only got us clearly organized, she helped get us clearly together and made our lives clearly easier!