It amazes me how much I forget. I mean, it isn’t like I’m not crazy busy but still. My kids can tell me something and I will actually be listening to them and the next moment  have forgotten what they said. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it is common enough to really be annoying.  I honestly don’t know what I would do without the calendar in my phone. I have learned to never agree to anything before first checking with my calendar. It might seem like a “duh” statement, but I wasn’t always this busy.

I remember as a teenager, I would buy “day planners” and try to fill it up with activities for each day. For some reason, when I saw my weekly calendar full of things, I felt good. I felt like I had a ‘life.” Nowadays, I look at my full to the top calendar and wish I had a life. I am so busy taking care of kids, meetings, errands, etc etc etc…that sometimes it feels like I am just a drone going through the motions. Not that I am complaining, but it can get a little impersonal at times.

I have been meaning to clean out my extra closet for a long time now. I am supposed to be getting married some time soon and my fiance has actually requested ‘space’ in my house. I think it is pretty nervy of him but I am trying to cooperate. It is actually really hard. I bought this house all on my own and filled it only with things that I like. I didn’t have to put Brad’s ugly old recliner in my house or any of my old furniture. I picked out everything and set it all up how I wanted. It may sound selfish and even prideful, but when I was dealing with the fact that I was suddenly a widow after 20 years of marriage…it gave me purpose and individual personality to ‘build’ my home. When I thought about bringing in an ‘alien presence’ (a new husband) I freaked a bit. It isn’t like he is bringing a ton of stuff, but when he mentioned a roll top desk, I was almost ready to call the whole thing off.

One thing I have learned over the years is to think before I speak. (most of the time) Instead of telling the fiance to hit the road with his fancy desk, I took my reaction to my internal examination room and tried to figure out why it freaked me out so much. Besides what I said earlier about having my own personality, I realized that my house is full. There are no ’empty’ spots. That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for more, it just means I have spread myself out to fill all the space I have. Kind of like filling a doll house with pudding. The creamy goodness will run into every room unless you put up a’pudding dam’ of some sort. (pudding?…)

Yesterday I had a burst of inspired momentum to clean out that extra closet. It was not an easy chore. When I moved into the house I used that closet to house all my craft supplies. Keep in mind that those same craft supplies now inhabit a room all their own and there was still a lot in the closet. Yes, I know….it’s a sickness….that produces art! I spent hours moving stuff out of my closet and into creative new homes through out my house. It was hard not to give up and just shut the door, but I tried to treat it like an organizing client and kept going.

At one point, I needed to move some of the adjustable shelving from one closet to the other to make more needed storage. As I tried to find the right size of shelf, I realized…..these closets are not the same size. Thinking back to when I first moved in….I vaguely remembered this fact. I had chosen the larger closet to house all my craft supplies. Thus began the transition from ‘closet cleaning’ to ‘closet cleaning and switching.’ Yes indeed, I totally took the bigger closet for myself. It is completely amazing to me how much more room a closet can be by adding just one foot of depth.

The project that started out as a” long time avoided tramatic chore” had turned into a joyous exploration of newly discovered lands. I tell ya, I almost wanted to sleep in there last night. (my bed was totally piled high….) I still have a somewhat mammoth sized amount of work to do today to finish up but….I am feeling very happy about finding again what I had once forgotten. Now, if I could only find that wedding ring……cause I said so.

Photo credit: http://www.wiki.indianfolklore.org/images/thumb/4/44/Elephant_with_logs_of_wood1.jpg/350px-Elephant_with_logs_of_wood1.jpg