The best laid plans

A few months after we were married, I threw out my husband’s blue baseball cap. He’s never quite forgiven me for that faux pas. But folks, trust me when I say it was a really ugly, dirty, floppy, smelly hat.

I stuffed it into the center of a blue garbage bag filled with items bound for the Salvation Army.  He didn’t notice it was gone until the following weekend, when he asked me, “Have you seen my hat?”

I can’t remember if I lied about it or not, but since I’m not very good at lying, I’m going to assert that I fessed up right away.

He’d been wearing it since high school, and at 21, he still looked like a teenager, as proven by the kid who came to the door on a Saturday in October selling magazine subscriptions. My husband answered the door wearing his weekend garb of the blue cap, t-shirt, sweat pants and Daffy Duck slippers. The boy asked him, “is your mom or dad at home?”

My husband was insulted, and made it clear to the boy that he was, in fact, an adult. He didn’t buy a subscription, either.

Eighteen years later, I don’t think we’ve changed very much as a couple. Even though I’ve never thrown out any precious item since the infamous blue hat, my husband still clings to his old, unfashionable stuff,  and I’m still begging him to reform.

This organizing experiment was not intended to be a marriage confessional, but I’m beginning to realize that how we surround ourselves with stuff and how we organize it says a lot about our personality.

The worksheets for Step 2 are designed “to help me make the new reality happen.” It goes on to say, “In the dream you created a vision of your ideal bedroom. Now, it’s probably scaring you—how to go from here to there?”

Yes, I think it seems too big to overcome, but I’m excited about the possibility of an organized work space, separate from our sleeping area.  Organizing Connection’s worksheets instruct me to come up with five actions to reach this goal, and to assign the goal to someone by a certain date. Hmm…better use a pencil.

I think we should do the closets first, because our new floor plan depends on installing new closet systems. Here are my five initial actions:

1. Clean out my own closet by Friday, November 20.
2. Have Kent clean out his closet by…when? TBD
3. Price and plan out new closet systems this coming weekend.
4. Design and price materials for our new wall shelving in our office zone.
5. Decide what to do with the bedroom furniture we are making redundant.