Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter

Shake it Up

We’re painting our living area. It’s big. We’re even doing the ceiling. I know I’ve mentioned our 19 feet of bookshelves that are full of books. Prepping was a hassle.  But you know what happens as you box up shelves of books? You see them anew. My husband did a few shelves while I was at work one day, and at dinner he was full of memories elicited by the photo album he’d looked through as he was boxing.

Another day, my daughter helped me do a few shelves and discovered books she wanted to read and whisked them away to her room. Anytime my children want to read, I feel like I’m winning.

Then, last night, as my daughter and I painstakingly removed the lusterware tea set from the china cabinet (so my son could help me move it away from the wall) we discussed how we need to have a tea party. Yes! Yes, we do.

Sometimes we become blind to our objects.  We don’t want to part with them, but we don’t use them enough. After all, the whole reason I keep many of my books is because I hope that someday my kids will read them. But they have to see them, touch them, interact with them to get drawn in. Ditto the tea set. When it’s just a pretty color behind a glass door, an item can be abstract, but when my daughter touched the tea set, she was inspired.

Of course, I plan to jettison a few books when I reshelve. First, there’s less time pressure on the other end. And, as I was taking the books down, a few made me think, do I really need this? Hopefully, when I start to put them back, the answer will be No.

We all dread projects that shake things up, but there are benefits. When you have to empty the cabinets, it’s an opportunity to remember the stuff you love and let go of the stuff you forgot you even had. I see this all the time with clients: We go deep into a closet, and it may have been ages since they emptied it. We get to the back and they say, “That’s from when the kids were young/my husband was into fly fishing/the renovation ten years ago. We don’t need that anymore!” Dragging everything out may be a hassle, but it’s usually pretty fruitful, because the stuff that migrates to the back is probably the stuff you don’t need anyway.

So, don’t dread the shake-ups, look for the opportunities. Touch your stuff, remember what you love, let go of what you don’t and maybe you’ll even be inspired to throw a tea party.