I'm not cleaning out my closet so much as I
am moving it all around the room, but that seemed as catchy a title as
any Eminem song reference.
You see, last week, I got the
notion that it was a bad idea to keep my makeup, hair products, and skin
care items (all chemically sensitive to heat and such) right smack dab
in front of the sunniest window in my house. Which is, of course, where
they were. Next to a table crammed with pots of cacti all fighting for a
taste of the narrow band of sunlight that managed to make it into my
room at the awkward angle necessary to reach the spot next to the
window.
A simple solution to this problem would have been to
switch them up, so the cacti sat in front of the window and the
cosmetics sat next to it....But then the cosmetics would no longer be
within arm's reach of the mirror....And I never liked the location of
that mirror anyway—forcing me to vie for space with my wardrobe in order
to get a good full-length view—nor, while we were on the subject, did I like the location of my earring rack.
Before I could tell myself to
stop, the various boxes and baskets of beauty products were arranged
artfully all over the floor, the clothes formerly in the wardrobe were
covering the bed, and I was shoving furniture around the room trying to
find the perfect arrangement, which would allow for a) seeing my whole
self in the mirror and having elbow room at the same time, b) my houseplants to actually sit in the sunlight, c) my cosmetics to not sit in the sunlight and be close the mirror and not piled too high.
This
is the kind of work that's tedious and maddening and that I
inexplicably love. I can try arrangement after arrangement, moving
everything 100 times, looking for the one that's perfect. I have
occasionally stayed up organizing my domicile until 1 in the morning
without starting to feel sleepy—and anyone who knows my sleep fanaticism
knows that's something. Thursday night, however, I gave up at 11,
because I had to go to work in the morning.
I put everything
haphazardly in some semblance of "away," and it's now been 3 full days
that my room has sat in organizational limbo. In a marathon tidying
session on Saturday, I found new or improved homes for everything except
a decorative box full of hair dyeing paraphernalia, and my full-length
mirror. I want to move my mirror to the wardrobe door, but the mirror's
just a tad too wide. I might even have to buy a new mirror, which will truly be
something, because the last time I paid real money for home furnishings
or decor was over 2 years ago when I had to buy a new desk to replace
the one that fell apart when I was moving to my current house.
But
my mirror situation is dire. Having moved it farther from the closet,
now I vie for space with my computer chair, just to see my distorted
reflection through the mirror that's currently propped up against the
wall, and I'd have to develop rubber limbs to be able to claim my beauty
products are within an arm's reach of it. I even went so far as to go
to IKEA yesterday evening. But their cheap full-length mirrors were out
of stock, so I went away empty handed. Phew! My streak of furniture
non-spending remains unbroken. At least for a few more days.
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3 comments:
Good luck with your new arrangement. Those kinds of projects are fun!
This is one reason I have not tackled the basement...some day we will get it so there is space to relax down there. I also wondered about you reaching for cosmetics and getting poked by a cactus.
I immediately connected with your reorg piece. When I lived in Washington, DC (SO HOT!), I used to keep my makeup near the window. Not a great idea since it was so hot down there in the summer months. However, it was the only place that was light enough in that apt. to see what I was doing!