The Closet

I have a confession.

My closets are a mess.

Not every closet. They seem to rotate. One month it’s the hall closet. A few months later it’s the pantry. Then the bedroom closet starts overflowing. It’s almost as if they take turns demanding my attention.

For years I treated this as a character flaw. The rest of my house is actually very clean and almost always very neat. I had a belief that if I were truly organized, my closets would stay that way.

Then I started taking care of my neighbor’s house while she was away.

Her home is immaculate. Every closet. Every cabinet. Every drawer. Everything has a place, and it stays there. I was fascinated—and a little envious.

Not because I wanted to be her. Because I was curious about me.

The interesting thing is that I detest clutter.

Walk into my home and you’ll find open spaces. I need space to breathe, to live, to create. Clutter drowns out the voice in my head. I can’t think clearly.

So where does the clutter go?

Into the closets.

It finally dawned on me that my closets aren’t simply a place where I hide clutter. My closets are where unfinished decisions wait their turn.

Some things arrive in my life before I know where they belong—or if they even belong at all.

A project. A kitchen gadget. A stack of papers. A shirt. An idea. A possibility.

Not every decision needs to be made the moment it appears.

So some things wait. In my closet.

Eventually, there comes a day when something shifts. It doesn’t shift because I wrote “clean closets” on my calendar.

It shifted because I just know it’s time. I’m ready.

I open the closet doors.

I pick up each item.

Some stay.

Some go.

The closet breathes again.

And then the cycle begins all over.

At first, I thought that meant I wasn’t reallly very organized.

Now I think it means I understand something about life’s rhythm.

Order isn’t a permanent state. Neither is chaos.

We inhale. We exhale.

We gather. We release.

We create. We edit.

We accumulate. We curate.

Nature doesn’t stay frozen in perfect balance. The seasons change. The tide moves in and out. Trees lose their leaves. Even our hearts alternate between contracting and relaxing.

Life isn’t static.

Why should my closets be?

Years ago, I used to tell clients that life isn’t a balancing act. Everyone talks about finding balance, but balance always made me think of a teeter-totter.

“What happens when two kids on a teeter-totter are perfectly balanced?” I’d ask.

There would usually be a long pause before it dawned on them, and they would say, “Nothing.”

Exactly.

Nothing.

Movement is where life happens.

Maybe that’s why I’m really not interested in maintaining perfection.

I’m interested in paying attention.

I create certainty a little differently.

I trust that, no matter what life hands me, I’ll deal with it.

Maybe I’ll learn something.

Maybe I’ll laugh.

Maybe my heart will break.

Regardless of what shows up, I’ll deal with it.

I’ll survive.

That trust allows me to tolerate a little uncertainty. A little organized chaos. A closet quietly filling while I’m busy living a life that matters.

Eventually, I’ll open the door.

I’ll sort.

I’ll let go.

I’ll make room again.

Not because I’ve failed to stay organized.

Because that’s how I work.

Maybe that’s true of more than closets.

Maybe that’s how life works.