the never-ending battle!

so today . . . i decided to clean out my closet. again.

the last two houses we lived in had large, walk-in closets. and i managed to keep them pretty full. but in oregon, you need a lot of clothes because it really does get cold and wet in the winter. and when you have big closets, you have lots of room for clothes.

when you have lots of clothes, you need a system in order to find what you need. my system is this--put the same types of clothing together, and then arrange each group into rainbow color order. i don't remember coming up with that system--i just thought that's what everybody did.

until the day i mentioned it to the other teachers at school . . .

you would think i had just confessed to being a clown in my free time! they looked at me in disbelief. and they laughed. and then they mocked me mercilessly. i tried to get them to explain to me how they found what they were looking for in their closets without rainbow color order. they couldn't really explain it, but their clothes usually matched, so they must have had some sort of system . . . it just apparently had nothing to do with color.

then came the day i couldn't find my orange blouse. i loved that blouse. it was an unusual color and was so soft. i looked and looked and looked, but it was not where it belonged. could i have taken it on a trip and left it somewhere? was it in a stack of clothes in the sewing room waiting to have a button replaced? would diandra have borrowed it? it didn't seem like the type of thing she would wear, but it had to be somewhere?!?! and yet it remained inexplicably absent.

until we moved. and as i was packing the clothing from the closet, i found the orange blouse, nestled in among the red blouses . . . when i told this story at school, they couldn't understand how i couldn't see the orange blouse when it was right there! but it wasn't where it belonged! it was out of rainbow color order. i didn't look for it with the red blouses--i looked between the red ones and the yellow ones--where the orange should be!

it is a good thing i was moving, because the laughing and mocking were getting a little out of control . . .

here in southern california you can wear summer weight clothes most of the year--you just have to add a sweater and tights for the few days in the winter where it dips below 60 degrees. which is a good thing, because the closets are small. when we moved into our current house, i went into the bedroom, looked at the closet, and thought, "houston, we have a problem!" there was one double-sized closet that i had to share! i looked in that closet and knew that there was no way our clothes were going to fit. so rollie went off to home depot to look for a solution. he came back with extra clothing rods and some hooks and chains, and proceeded to add a second rod for hanging clothes. that helped, but it seems like it is still a constant battle to balance the amount of clothing i have with the amount of closet space that is available to me.

this is the reason that i have to clean out my closet every few months. it isn't that i buy that many new clothes--it's just that i had so many to start with. my goal is to get all my clothes into one closet. what i really need to do is be more ruthless with the winter clothes, since i rarely need them. and yet, i love sweaters and jackets! even if i hardly ever get to wear them, i always think, "yes, but what if we have a cold day . . . " and then it seems the colors i like come in slightly different shades--so i have 3 brown jackets, 2 olive ones, 3 red sweaters, and i am not even going to tell you how many black sweaters and jackets i have . . . and that isn't even counting the heavier jackets and coats. really.

i should probably clean out the coat closet next . . .

but today i made progress. i let go of a little more. i think it is starting to get easier. which is a good thing, because the garage is looming . . . and winter clothing should be going on sale any day now :)