Closet Accomplished

Today my SIL took the stuff I'd saved back for her and my brother. Today my roommate put all of the stuff in the upper portion of the closet that would now live in the upper portion of the closet. Today, the closet organization project was completed!!

I had to have A LOT of help with this. Mobility limited what I could do so my roommate very kindly moved everything out of the closet for me and then moved all of the things that I decided would stay back INTO the closet. He took the stuff that needed to go out of the house. He shopped for what items I needed to make this happen. I am very, very grateful for all the help I was given on this project.

I cleaned stuff in dire need of cleaning. I got rid of things and negotiated other stuff out of the house. I made the plan, altered the plan when needed, and did my best to keep this ship sailing.

So this is my advice when you do your own organizing in a closet.

1. Have a goal. Don't go into this with guilt. Don't let the emotional baggage of "I need to clean that messsss" hold you back. Have a positive goal when you work in your closet.

2. Make the goal direct. "I want it to be clean" is daunting and, weirdly, kind of abstract. "I want this closet to hold things I need to access but not all the time" or "I want this closet to hold my clothes in an organized manner" or something like that will give you direction.

3. At the same time, be flexible about your plans. I had a lot of ideas about how I wanted the closet to look, but at the end of the day, most of them would have taken a lot more time and energy than I needed to spend on this. I still have several other aspects of the room that need addressing and I couldn't afford to get stuck on the closet project for too long.

4. Which brings me to the most important bit of advice. Know your limits. Take a realistic assessment of your energy level and the time you can allot to this. Figure out if you need help. Accept that it may take a while. Accept that your space may look MORE chaotic for a while.

5. When you get tired or discouraged, take a break. Sometimes this break will be just a few minutes. Sometimes, it may be a few days. I find it also helps to go look at something that actually IS functioning now and remember that you made that happen. You can make the other stuff happen as well.

I remember laying on my old bed a while back and thinking that getting my room to the point where I could get a new bed would be time-consuming, exhausting, and very, very hard on me. And it was. But I still made it happen.

I can remember laying in my new bed and thinking about how I needed to tackle the closet next and how it would be daunting and stressful and I would have to ask for a lot of help and even then it would be exhausting. And it was. But I still made it happen.

Now I have to dismantle a very large, very useless, very heavy computer desk. And it is going to be A BITCH because every day with this desk has always been A BITCH. But I think I can make it happen. It may just take a while.