At this time of year, I start to get really angsty. Winter has overstayed her welcome and Anxiety is at her most obnoxious. I wake up in the morning and Anxiety is staring me in the face. She rambles on about how it is going to be freezing out, how exhausted I am, and how I should just stay in bed. It takes everything in me to shut out her stupid voice and swing my legs over the side of the bed. A beautiful child is sprawled across the center of the bed, mouth wide open and snoring softly. His tiny arm taking up the warm, vacant space that I have just left behind. I stretch my arms above my head, curling my hands and extending my middle fingers. To Anxiety. To winter. F**k. Spring can not come soon enough.
I decide to take on a project. I vowed that I was going to be fearless and take on the scariest task of all scary tasks. The kids closets. Picture two sliding doors, with a hellish red glow radiating from around the edges. Screams and growling laughter echoing from the depths. I can’t be certain, but I think I saw a stuffy missing an eye run its hand across its neck, from a crack in the door. This shit is no joke.
What is the deal with closets, anyways? When you are young, you are afraid of them. Imagining that there could be a child eating giraffe or a murderer in there. But you should know better than that. You know that you’ve got that closet full of all the crap that you picked up off your floor and tossed in there, when you were asked to clean your room. No one is going to be able to fit in there, let alone a ravenous 20-foot animal, named Jerry, with a hankering for tiny humans. Regardless, that light goes out and one of those bastards are in there for sure!!!!
To be fair, the wardrobe woes don’t improve that much with adulthood. The unwanted intruders may have moved out. It is no longer the stashing place of everything you own, random kitchen items, both perishable and non, and items of unknown identity or origin. However, the closet is still packed! The hanger rod is sagging under the weight of all of the clothes that you have commitment issues with. I have an unhealthy relationship with hoodies that I have had for over ten years, that are stained and ripped. I mean, we have been through so much together. I can't imagine my life without them. The floor may appear to have some semblance of organization, but there are laundry baskets with a variety of random things – overnight bags, water shoes, board games...
I was on fire, with my first baby. Every time the seasons changed, I would go through all of his clothes. I would fold up his little sleepers, tuck them in a box and label them. Treating everything with precision and care. Sniffling at how quickly he was growing. Once my second was born, I started to fall behind. Picture a chubby baby, complete with baby mullet, or chullet, as we lovingly referred to it, busting at the seams of his sleeper, with the sleeves now three-quarter length. And so began the downward spiral of the kids closet disaster. Less clothes left the closets and more junk was tossed in there. And, here we are.
It took me two afternoons. Two afternoons, two closets. I forced my babies to to part with their broken or unused toys, the guilt of my gross hoodies haunting me. We got rid of the unpredictable, single-eyed stuffie and the too snug jammies. Project completed. This seemed to create a little light in this winter darkness. More room now for Jerry. Next project - my closet. Maybe. At some point. One day.
Does Mommy need to lose her shit?
Not this week.
Comments
Post a Comment