I folded and organized and stacked my shirts in rainbow order (SHUT UP) and now I’m afraid to get dressed and mess them up

Goodbye for now, obscene amounts of Christmas crap!

I’ve finally gotten you culled and organized enough to pack you away with a passable amount of OCD compliance. I feel a nagging compulsion to buy all matching bins next year so you look less overwhelming when you’re put away again. But as an imagined need, that would be even more obscene. So I won’t even bring it up.

I’ve spent my evening epic-purging my clothes and shoes, and then—obvs—rainbow-organizing my First-World-obscene shoe collection ... all while rocking out to the Full Monty cast recording on repeat. As one does.

A brief docent-led tour:

Above: as top-down rainbowy as I could organize my running/athletic shoes, with rows of white and black on the bottom. All topped off with a size-large Jake the Drake Beanie Baby, which I bought as an investment in place of opening any IRAs or 401(k)s.

*taps head to show how good he is with money*

Also above: as top-town casual-to-formal as I could organize my Converse-genre sneaks, with my forlorn dress shoes on the bottom wishing in vain that I’ll someday have a reason to dress above my demimonde station. A disorganized basket of flip-flops sits to the left, along with an ugly antique ladder I’ve cleverly repurposed as a belt holder. My gym towels perch on top. Because I had no idea where else to put them.

This is my consumerist shame.

Your jealousy is the ugly stepsister

We have a refrigerator at work filled with icy cold pop and an honor-system piggy bank (that’s shaped like an actual pig!) on top for us to pay a quarter every time we take a pop. Naturally, I brought every quarter I could scrounge out of random couch cushions and pay phones to work and stacked them so precariously on my desk that they became a safety hazard and five OSHA violations. So I searched through our storage room at home for a handsome, tasteful demitasse or votive that I could possibly repurpose as a quarter caddy (coffer? cradle? cauldron? kettle? so many alliterative options!) ... and instead I FOUND A WHOLE BAG OF ASSORTED DISNEY PRINCESS PARTY CUPS, the Cinderellaiest of which I—as people do—arranged on my desk with a Diet Coke can and an artful jumble of quarters for this celebratory photo:

Doin’ some screwin’

I don’t really love awards shows but I feel like I need to watch them to stay informed and young and fresh and relevant and hip and cool and I’m sorry but I’m old and I forgot where I was going with this. Oh—and I REALLY don’t love the tumbling mountains of bags and sacks and jars and cracked blister packs and more bags each holding as many at hundreds and as few as two nails or screws or washers or butterfly bolts or drywall anchors on the workbench in our workroom. So I’ve been watching the Golden Globes (and Oprah’s brilliant, impassioned, inspiring speech alone makes me insanely thankful I did) tonight while organizing about half of all that hardware clutter in my new Stanley(R) Stormaster(R). So now I’m kinda informed and kinda hip and kinda cool AND kinda organized. Baby steps!

Can you read my mind?

I continue to be horrified by the artifacts I'm uncovering from my childhood that 1) were really gay and 2) for reasons known only to the gods I never had sense enough to throw away instead of storing them in boxes I was condemning myself to trip over for all eternity.

To wit: every freaking issue of my years-long subscription to Sheet Music Magazine, which delivered to my piano monthly collections of themed sheet music augmented by an occasional interview with a theme-relevant musician. The whole thing couldn't have been any gayer if it included magazine covers devoted to Muppets, the Annie and Superman movies, or beribboned teddy bears pretending to play piano duets.

Sigh.

Remove.
Adjust.
Dust.
Edit.
Organize.

Gravity.

Crap.

Excavating my room

The girl on the Lincoln Logs container looks like she's wrapped her hair on a toilet-paper tube and perched it on her head as though that were an acceptable way to spend all eternity building houses that I'm sorry but Lincoln never would have fit in. That's Jake the Drake -- my eponymous investment Beanie Baby -- in the center. I'm holding on to him for a few more years until his value tops $10K and then I'm gonna exit the accord and unload him. Buy low, sell high! I have no recollection of the book on the right but I'm sure it made me gay. Thank goodness I had those manly Lincoln Logs as an antidote.

This is me in ten years

This was hidden away among three generations of surprises in my grandmother's attic when we emptied the house -- which was built by my great-grandfather -- after her death in 1984. We have no idea who these people are, but we assume they're ancestors so I hung this picture on the wall of my first house for seven years because NORWEGIAN GUILT. I have to say, I clearly get my smoldering handsomeness from the woman in the picture because aside from her dated middle part, the resemblance -- not to mention the eternally sunny disposition -- is uncanny. Assuming that even is a woman. And it goes without saying that I get my boxy, poorly drawn hands from the man.

Well, crap

I've ordered a good $500 worth of jeans in various tasteful and age-appropriate colors from Amazon over the past few months, and I finally sat down tonight to figure out how to return the ones that are too small. Which is pretty much all of them. Even though I ordered the size I always wear. But I just discovered to my procrastinated dismay that you can't return stuff to Amazon after 30 days. And you ESPECIALLY can't return stuff to Amazon with a cat in the box.

So I am now the proud owner of about 10 pair of 36 (cough! cough!) x 34 slim-fit jeans in tasteful shades of khakis and blues and greens. And I certainly don't expect people to compensate me for my procrastination and my inability to read fine print, so if you live nearby and think you could fit your hips in some brand-new, still-betagged 36 (cough! cough!) x 34 slim-fit jeans, shoot me a private message and I can totally hook you up.

Also! Remind me to tell you the story about the time more than 30 days ago that I somehow ordered two boxes each of two different pair of totally cool sneakers. (I know. Who DOES something that dumb?) Bring your size 12 feet on by and see if they fit.

First come, first to get a bonus free cat.

It's always the messiest before it gets the organizediest, right?