Once upon a time, I posted about clearing the floor of my walk-in closet. It was a big deal to me, and after weeks/months/who-knows-how-long of doing major bodily contortions to get to my clothes, I was happy about it.
I shared my progress, got the usual understanding and supportive comments, and enjoyed re-discovering my wardrobe the next morning.
Then, I started to notice site traffic coming in from a forum. I love these kinds of hits. They mean that someone has posted a link to my site. Most of the time, when I follow the link, I can’t see anything because it’s a private forum where I’m not a member. Sometimes, though, I get to peek in on what is being said about me.
Usually that’s fun.
This time it was not. Someone who was obviously a kindred spirit had posted a link to my homepage and said something like “if you need inspiration.”
That part made me smile.
But then, I started seeing the responses. Because the top post on that day happened to be the clearing-the-floor-is-a-job-in-itself one, but somehow they thought they were clicking over to a how-to-be-perfect organizing site, their shock was evident.
Evident through them saying things like, “She calls that organized?” (which I didn’t) and “Wow, now I feel better about my house, that’s horrendous!” (Glad I could help).
It’s part of blogging to have this stuff happen, and I get that. No one left a rude comment on the post, so they weren’t bad people, I just happened in on a private conversation that wasn’t really private.
At first, I was hurt, but I got over it. I then had a renewed passion to provide a safe place, a consistently safe place, where people could come and realize it’s okay to celebrate small victories like a cleared floor even though the rest of the closet is scary.
A place where people who aren’t naturally organized can talk about organization without feeling like an idiot.
All that to say . . . don’t mess with my husband.
What?
With the craziness of this week, I decided to edit and post a webisode that I recorded a while back . . . of my husband. It makes me smile the entire way through.
Here’s how it happened. I took the boys to a birthday party while he stayed home with our sick daughter. When I returned home, he was working in his closet. I asked, “Do you want to make a webisode?”
He said, “Ummm, yeah!”
We had so much fun making this, and he did a great job of rearranging his closet so he could actually walk into it and get to the things he needs.
Functionality was his goal. Not organizational perfection. Got that? Because it’s one thing to put myself out there for criticism, but it’s another thing to put my husband out there.
Not that any of you, my wonderful and understanding readers, would be rude, but I’m just gun-shy because it’s so similar to my own I Can Finally Walk Into My Walk-In Closet post.
Re-arranging is a detail. I often have to remind myself that it’s a worthy detail. Disaster areas become disaster areas when I let myself believe that it’s not worth doing anything unless I have the time to do it all.
Perfectly.
I’m really sorry I don’t have before/after still shots for those of you can’t watch the webisode. Just know that he moved around the boxes and trunks and bags, and got rid of a few things like magic rope, and now he can get to his sock drawer.
And that he’s funny. In a dry-humor-great-straight-man-for-Nony kind of way.
Oh, and I’m not wearing my pink shirt in this because it got throw-up on it the night before.
If you can’t see the video, click here to watch it on youtube.
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I’m linking this up to Orgjunkie.com’s 52 Weeks of Organizing. Even though it’s really re-arranging.