Sometimes it Gets Messier First

I’m guessing you’ve experienced that phenomenon where you go to organize something and all of a sudden it’s like a tornado swept through your house and not only is all of the accumulated yuck revealed, the space is also untidy, strewn with who-knows-what on every flat surface, including the ones you’d like to walk on.

And there’s that moment of, “Oh, crap, what have I gotten myself into?!?”

Organizing is a kind of 3-D cleaning. We’re cleaning through height and depth. We often distinguish tidying/organizing from cleaning, as though cleaning is just for the grime, the food, the outside-traipsed-indoors. To me, dirty has nothing to do with a judgment of good or bad; it’s just an acknowledgment that something isn’t serving my well-being, the flow and/or usefulness of the space, and something isn’t being tended to/appreciated.

So when I have boxes stacked with miscellaneous items from moving, or piles of clothes my kids have grown out of waiting to be sorted, or clutter on my dresser, it’s an opportunity to improve flow, to give life to the things blocking flow, and to make it all useful again. Even clean clutter takes up a kind of space for me, including mentally. So. How to tackle it?

You might (I might!) start with the intention to create three (and only three!) piles – 1) donate 2) trash 3) keep. Easy. Well, simple. Not easy at all, like most things worth doing.

I start pulling stuff out of boxes, sorting… And then I realize there are certain things I could give to specific people. That becomes pile #4. And then there are the ‘maybe’ things… pile #5? The mess seems to multiply before my eyes.

I need to take a moment to realize it’s not messier than it was before. It’s mess exposed, revealed, given space, and only in that way can I actually tend to it. When it’s hidden, it’s not visible, but it’s definitely present. I know it’s there. And even the best plan can’t take into account the truly *beautiful* mess of life and living. So the first thing to go in the trash pile is the plan!

Life doesn’t fit into boxes, and making more boxes (and baskets and piles) is being responsive to the situation. (I do realize this can be taken too far, there’s a learning…) Things touch us in unexpected ways, and honoring the next leg of the journey for an item is a way to express gratitude for what it was in your life while it was yours.

And… isn’t it interesting how our interiors can mimic, match, mirror our exteriors? Before I attend to the compressed mess in the closet, there’s a density of weight in my mind. I know the mess is there, out of sight, contained. And it’s the same for my emotions.

Once I lay out my mess to go through things, memories come flooding in, my mind becomes more spread out and chaotic – and I also get the chance to really inspect, discern, and decide what to do with each item. In the hidden jumble before the undoing, it’s such a mix, there’s not enough spaciousness to make a good decision.

And then comes… following through with the piles. It’s amazing how quickly closet stashes can be disassembled, and how long it can take to re-organize, donate, decide, and take the action. My local donation center is a half hour away, so I wait until I have a significant amount before I make that trip; some people I see rarely, so piles for them linger longer.

I know some piles take longer, and build that into my personal measurement of success. For me it’s not about finishing everything in a set amount of time, it’s about making realistic goals for each type of pile. Truly tending to the items means I’m not just trying to disappear the mess, I’m trying to metabolize it, get the nutrients I can from it and make the rest as useful as possible for others.

For everything going back in the [metaphorical] closet, I love cleaning the area (maybe some cobwebs, some vacuuming, some baseboard cleaning…) before playing the Tetris-like game of determining what will go where. What do I want to access easily? What requires a stepladder? What will stack? It’s all so subjective, what feels good, or good enough, to look at, to be near.

And sometimes… decisions are exhausting. Each decision, made well, takes a bit of energy. Once I’m feeling depleted, I stop making values-aligned decisions. I need to resource, maybe by getting some air, maybe by stepping away for a while, maybe by phoning a friend and having a chat about what’s coming up for me in deal with the stuff. I don’t consider it a sign of weakness to take pauses rather than finish it all in an unrealistically short time (although sometimes there’s a need for that).

It might feel shameful to postpone a step. I invite you to consider whether that shame is tied to your own sense of well-being or some societal, or perhaps even familial, standard of tidiness or timeliness that isn’t yours. And considering how little we acknowledge grief, and how much can come up in a good sorting session, it’s incredibly powerful to let the emotions of letting go really move through the body rather than pushing them away like the original mess was pushed away to begin with.

With this kind of cleaning, we’re remembering, writing (and maybe even re-writing) our stories. We’re working with memories— alive, fallible, beautiful, potentially painful, and ever-evolving. We’re dreaming and releasing dreams; we’re recognizing meaning and orienting toward our own versions of the good, true, and beautiful.

As you go through your stuff, you might remember different versions of yourself, or even potential versions of yourself. Whatever comes up is valid. Everything has informed you in some way. That’s important and worth taking a moment for. Share when it feels relevant/supportive to do so. Small rituals can make a world of difference. We don’t do closure well in the U.S., but we can do it better, and little bits count. Lingering and wallowing aren’t helpful, but rushing through isn’t, either. Closure is a feeling, it creates a spaciousness in which something else can be born – and there’s no rush for that, either.

Messes are evidence of life, of having lived, of having lived in a place. Allowing ample time for the messier-before-it’s-clean really allows life and the recognition of it.

Tip: If you feel bad about getting rid of something that has sentimental value, something you really don’t want to keep but which means something to you, try a Digital Scrapbook Pile. These things can be photographed, the photos put into a digital album, and stored with very little space. The pile itself can be put into a box (or multiple boxes labeled with different destinations) with a date on it three months from now. You can set aside time weekly (or so) to check out the digital scrapbook. If you’re moved to keep anything, take it out of the box and make a home for it. In three months you can deliver anything you haven’t removed. Label the box(es) clearly to make sure you know where the items are going. Sorting a second time isn’t recommended!