Nothing quite compares to finding the next “most beautiful best pair of shoes you’ve ever seen”. But what about that little letdown you experience when you bring your prized possessions home and literally have to squeeze your new shoes in your closet due to lack of shoe organization? Ummm, too many shoes…
This happened to me last fall when I fell in love with three new pairs of gorgeousness at Nordstrom’s. Once home, I thought I’d simply spend a few minutes dealing with some very needed shoe organization. Usually this would be simply a matter of shifting the summer sandals into the off-season closet that I keep in my daughter’s former bedroom. But, if you recall, both summer and fall held their presence well through Thanksgiving, and I had trouble making the shift, let alone finding room for the new precious ones. And at that point, there were already a number of more recent purchases also experiencing closet limbo, due to the sorry fact that there was no room at the inn.
So, I had the “brilliant idea” of placing the shoes I was currently wearing…flats, sandals, cute walking shoes, boots, heels, all the current apples of my eye…into a clothes basket in my bedroom, “just temporarily”. This way I could really dig into the closet and get rid of the ones that were worn, dated, or didn’t fit. I had all intentions of doing this right away.
But, um, several months passed. Because every time I looked at the shoe basket now filling higher and higher with “current shoes” and looked into the closet and didn’t miraculously see any more room than before, I would break into a sweat, call myself a failure, and walk away.
Finally, after several sessions with my inner shrink, I realized that I was in this limbo, this “avoidance-avoidance” conflict, because I knew I would have to empty the entire closet and try on every pair of shoes if this project were to be accomplished. And I knew there would be an inconvenient takeover of the bedroom in the process, a room that I just so happened to share with a non-shoe aficionado. It was then that I accepted the axiom that holds true for far more than shoes:
It has to get messier before it gets clean.
So I waited until the time was right and tackled the shoe closet while my spouse was out of town for a few days. This eliminated one of my biggest rationalizations of why I “couldn’t” do this (that there would be no room for a second person in the bedroom once I ripped apart the closet!) It really didn’t take as long as I thought, certainly not as long as I had waited! Three working sessions of shoe organization later over a two day period, I had a bag of shoes for Goodwill, summer shoes and special occasion shoes were in the “other” closet, while all in-season choices stood in admirably well-organized display in the bedroom closet.
So, my lovely Mamas, I understand that many of you do not have the urge to cling to things and that your closets are simply perfect. But for those Mamas that have closet “issues” like me, (Hi, Ali!), I hope this little confession helps you gather the gumption to tackle one of your messes. Remember, just like in relationships and in writing essays, it does indeed have to get messier before it gets clean, one way or another.
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Fashionably yours,
Deborah
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