Like whiplash, a moment of déjá vu smacked me upside the head. I squirmed in my seat as I recalled a conversation in this very place about that same color hue on a few others … two weeks ago.
Out of the corner of my left eye, a whitish glow surfaced on my shoulder – the remnants of spittle from our minister’s grandchild when I held her the last time I wore that top. Oh, no. No-no-no-no-no.
I only see most of these folks once a week unless otherwise planned (or unless I am not showered, sans makeup and making a quick dash to the grocery store). How did I manage to grab the one top that hadn’t been immediately thrown into the hamper when I got home?
It has a lot to do with my filing system.
I may have mentioned that we have a very small house. It is ours (technically, it’s the bank’s, but let’s not nitpick), and I am proud to call it home. But its size, or lack of, means closet space is minimal.
Some of my clothes are in the spare room – First Born’s vacant room, which we chose not to turn into a shrine in her honor because, well, small house. Wash baskets don’t get emptied right away, because I have to be creative in conjuring up closet space. What would you call something smaller than a closet? A mini-closet? A closette? Wait, I’ve got it. A box.
Early in the morning, I need to easily access my options, so I devised a system of placing clothing around the bedroom. Some people call it “piling,” but I prefer the term “filing.” I file based on season, color and amount of usage. Oh, and by whether it fits me that week.
Normally, it’s a very efficient system at 6:30 in the morning. There is the Wore to Work This Week file, the Did I Run Into Anyone I Know file, the Clean But It Obviously Shrank in the Wash file, and the Can’t Camouflage That Stain file – also known as the hamper.
Every so often, an item gets misfiled and grabbed as a last resort when it’s too dark to see that the last time I wore it, I dropped half a meatball on the front. This could be uncomfortable, and not just because it’s crusty from the sauce.
One solution would be to carry a scarf or a spare neutra lcolored top with me for just such a predicament. That would entail A) knowing how to fashionably wear scarves and B) assuming I had a spare top.
In desperation, I could resort to throwing everything into the wash after I’ve worn it once. But I don’t. There, I’ve said it: I am a shirt recycler. My sister is, at this moment, assuming the fetal position and weeping for me.
The real mystery is how I even have enough clothing to not fit into my closet. It seems like I wear the same four things all the time. I don’t really… it’s more like seven. But when the temperature is the same 20 degrees all week, I run out of decent sweaters that aren’t pilled to the point of resembling cloud formations.
Second Born’s room would make a great walk-in closets lash office, but she still graces us with her presence during the summer. Once she graduates from college and decides she wants to live more than a day’s drive away, I will surely need the distraction of a hobby, like knitting or tearing walls down.
For now, I think my filing system may need some review. I’ve made so many files that there may actually be room in the closet.
— Janine Talbot lives in Saco with her husband Chuck and their dog and cats. She writes about adjusting to the empty nest and not voting her spouse off the island at www.momofmanywords.com. Contact her at janinevtalbot@gmail.com.
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