Though I’d rather hang by my thumbs…

Oh goody! I’ve decided that the Fun! and Exciting!! THING to be DOING this weekend is the ritualistic purging of our master bedroom closet.

{monotone} However will I survive the excitement…{/monotone}

But still, I am exaggerating. I would not, in fact, rather hang by my thumbs than do this. I’d say my actual level of ‘would rather’ on this is somewhere along the lines of… ‘would rather go to DMV in person to renew my driver’s license’.

All of which is just avoiding the actual topic.

What I’d actually like to have happen is this. I would like to wake up Sunday morning and find that the Closet Fairies have visited me in the night.

Yes.

That would be nice.

I’d like the Closet Fairies to have gone through my closet, hauled out and disposed of all the clothes I keep because otherwise I wouldn’t have a white button down work shirt, or because the grease spot isn’t that noticeable, or because while they never seem to be what I want to wear today, I might want to wear them, you know, sometime.

I’d also like them to weed out all the shoes I keep saying I will wear someday when my feet aren’t so butt-ugly and/or I have remembered to get a pedicure, as well as the ones I keep on the basis that I don’t have another pair like them and that sometimes, a girl just needs to have a pair of ancient, dilapidated, filthy and otherwise disreputable sandals. You know. For those times when you want to look bad from head all the way down to your toes, peeking out from beneath fraying faux leather straps.

If while they were at it they could go through all the crap on the shelves in there, that would be awesome. Maybe toss about half of that piano sheet music I never have played and never will play, the “mostly” empty bottles of cleansers, the antediluvian candles someone gave me for a gift that I keep because, hey! “G-I-F-T!”, you don’t throw away a GIFT, what kind of unloving person are you, anyway?! Just because they are so old they have turned that funky yellow color and the scent has gone vaguely ucky does not make it any less disrespectful for me to finally give them the old heave-ho.

I read a beautiful statement about that recently…where was it…oh yes. An article at Dollar Stretcher article, Stuff!, regarding the process of decluttering your house:

Lesson 5: Laugh that you still feel guilty for never using that cute tea set grandma gave you eight Christmases ago even though you never have (and never will) like tea. Your obligation to a gift-giver ends after a proper expression of thanks. (Emphasis mine.)

That particular quirk of behavior has always fascinated me. Things like, “Quick! Auntie Mee-Mee is coming over, get out that ghastly thing she crocheted for us eight years ago!”, or the way I hold onto rose scented bath oils and stuff for decades rather than toss them purely because my mom gave them to me.

Even though I know my mom understands that I appreciated the gift even if I didn’t use it, and that she would heartily endorse me cleaning out my closet, and furthermore that it was hardly like she went out and bought the Cadillac of Bath Salts.

Unfortunately, the Closet Fairies are booked solid clear through a week after never, so it’s up to me to do all of that. Myself.

Feh.

What makes it even worse, of course, is that I want the cleaned out closet. See, if this were something my mother was telling me I ‘had’ to do, or something my husband was stomping his feet about, or something some Evil Overlord had decreed: Behold, throughout the land, I demand that people everywhere purge their closets of useless crap they neither need nor want!, I’d be able to stomp my own feet, stick out my tongue, and suggest that they can jolly well do it themselves, thank YOU!

But no.

It’s just me, sick and tired of having things fall on my head every time I take the iron down from the shelf. Sick and tired of staring at a closet stuffed to the gills with clothes, yet having nothing I want to actually wear. Sifting through fifteen bottles of ‘too empty to squirt anymore’ cleansers in search of something I could actually use to clean my shower.

I want a clean closet.

But I don’t want to actually do the work.

**sigh**

Being a grownup really bites sometimes, you know it?