This past weekend I took a couple of days and completely cleaned out one of the closets in my office. I am fortunate to have two. This particular closet has housed an assortment of photos, crafting tools, tissue paper and items waiting to become useful. I am in and out of this closet often and over the six years of its use, it began to take on a ‘junk drawer’ persona. Anything I had that didn’t have a home ended up here. Anything that I thought I might use one day, ended up here. Anything I didn’t want to look at everyday, yes, ended up here.

On Sunday I opened the door of this closet and felt this overwhelming desire to just…well, clean it out. As I stood there, staring at the stacks and piles, I almost hesitated but then something occurred to me. I am in the process of goal setting and dream planning for 2021. A big part of my plan is this website, Fence Row Living and creating a more sustainable, simple life. Cleaning out this closet may not be much but it could be a simple way to put into action everything I am working to create in the coming year. They say every journey begins with a single step, so I grabbed the closest box, carried it out to my loft and sat it on the floor. Then I walked back to the closet, grabbed a couple more boxes, walked out to the loft and sat them next to the first one. I repeated this process for the next hour until everything from the closet lay in the middle of my loft, where I could not pretend it didn’t exist. Then I squirrelled the shelving around until I was finally able to pull it out as well. I vacuumed the floor and then stared at the empty space that only a couple hours ago had caused me a slight annoying twitch whenever I opened the door. Who knew that 6 square feet could have such a powerful impact, positive or negative. Standing there looking at the emptiness I felt…joy. The same sort of joy that I feel after a really good, long walk. I was energized by the possibilities.

It really wasn’t just as simple as emptying out a closet. Yes, that part was easy enough but once everything was out and the closet was completely empty, now I had to go back to the loft space and face the piles laying there. As I began sorting through I soon realized that, if I was going to do this right, just cleaning out this one closet was not going to be enough. I didn’t want to just clean it up and put everything back. It might look nice for awhile but ultimately that would lead to just returning to the same mess as before. I wanted this space to serve a purpose, have a focus. That meant that a lot of the things piled up in front of me would either need to find a new home or get tossed out altogether. If it no longer served a purpose to that space, it simply could not return. Ultimately, over the next two days, I reorganized both closets in my office, a small hutch and created a new space for family games, toys and movies.

2020 was the year that I cleaned up my inner closet. Several times I opened the door only to slam it shut and run away. In May, when it was becoming very clear that serious changes needed to happen, I was in the midst of a 5-Day Challenge with Cathy Heller. At the end of the challenge I signed up for her 12-week Made To Do This program. None of it was by accident. Desperate to make a go of my own business, I had started taking steps in January. Then Covid set my whole plan on it’s heels and I was floundering about but still determined when I somehow stumbled onto Cathy’s Made For This Challenge. Over the next several weeks I pulled out box after box and either faced what was in it or put it where it rightly belonged. Today, as I look toward this coming year, I am only sorry that it took so long for me to understand that while my closet will not always stay this organized, if I tackle each box as they appear, I can prevent it from becoming nothing more than a space to store my junk.