The tale of two closets

Although I like things neat, I’m not a clean freak, like my dear husband, who I affectionately call, “Mr. Ajax.”  I remember when we were dating, I invited him over to my apartment for dinner.  At the time, I had a long commute, on top of working 70 hours a week at a demanding job. This didn’t leave a lot of time for things like cleaning.  It was in the early days of our relationship and I wanted to make a good impression.  Sooooo, all the clutter in my apartment went quickly into the ONLY closet of the apartment.   Well, Mr. Ken arrived and being the nice person he is, he offered to help.  I needed something from the closet.  As he approached the closet, I remembered, oops if he opens the door everything will come tumbling out.  Busted!

Flash forward 25 years.  We live in a beautiful colonial house.  It has lots of closet space.  But with lots of closet space, comes the need to fill that closet space.  The same goes for my home office.

I didn’t think to take before pictures of the closet or home office, so I got some stock photos to give you a sense of the “before” picture.

I was on a cleaning roll and knew I had to act quickly.  I don’t get into these moods very often, oh say once every 20 years or so.

The hall linen closet was the focus of my cleaning bug.

The closet in this “before” picture is actually much neater than my linen closet.

Where did all this stuff come from?  The closet is only about 12 inches wide and 24 inches deep!

Ah, now this is a thing of beauty. I felt my whole body relax when I was done!  I still go by and look into the linen closet and admire my work (Okay, so maybe I do need to get a life.)

Yep, this is pretty much what my office looked like.

You wouldn’t think that that much stuff could come out of this room, but it did!

Ah, that is much better! When I sit in my office now, my mind is clear. I feel more productive. This is partly due to the fact that I don’t have to stare at papers everywhere.

My favorite part of my home office is my zen shelf, where I have rocks I’ve collected from various trips. I have rocks from a Mt. Washington stream, a Vermont river, a desert in New Mexico. I love looking at these and remembering my fun vacations.

So, my lessons learned from all this:

1. When your environment is uncluttered, your mind is uncluttered and you can be open to new possibilities.

2.  Don’t wait 20 years before deciding to clean out a closet!

3.  Try to channel the cleaning bug more frequently.

So what about you?  What does your environment look like?

Messy office photo is courtesy of Adam Belles’ Flickr Photostream, under Creative Commons Licensing.

Messy office photo is courtesy of Moriza’s Flickr Photostream, under Creative Commons Licensing.