True Confessions
When I was a preteen, we visited my aunt in Alabama every summer.
Verleane "did hair," as she called her job as a beautician. My uncle Bunch was a dairy farmer (Yes, Bunch. His real name was Nathan.) He had built a beauty salon on the back of their house, between the house and the milking parlor, just for Verleane to "do hair."
I loved her shop. It was full of what I thought were guilty pleasures. Bottles and bottles of shampoos and conditioners, hair dyes, permanent wave chemicals, straightening chemicals, hair rollers, bobby pins of all sizes. Verleane also "did nails." So, bottles and bottles of nail polish, in all colors, but probably not black. Cuticle conditioners, buffers, nail polish remover, nail strengtheners. One afternoon, when my aunt and mother were drinking coffee and smoking in the kitchen, I went into the salon and painted my nails, then painted them again with whatever mysterious substance was in the other bottles on the tray. I has unknowingly painted over my new nail color with a dissolving substance, so my new nail polish started melting. Needless to say, my aunt was upset, and had to set about cleaning up the mess.
She didn't ban me from the shop, thank goodness.
I also liked to sneak in there and read the True Confessions magazines. Lurid and suggestive stories of illicit affairs, babies born "out of wedlock," high school boys and girls sowing their oats. Nothing explicit, only suggested. That may have been the appeal. I could use my imagination. I was in middle school, but at least a couple of boys and girls were already having sex.
My post today has some of these true confessions, but not what you think. My life has been pretty mundane and unexciting when it comes to secrets, sexual or otherwise. I have none. Secrets, that is. I have three kids and two grandkids, after all.
But you may have guessed already--I was an organizer for a while. Not professional, by any means. But I made banners and fliers, and people paid me to help them get organized. I suppose you could call me a lapsed organizer.
What I talk about in my blog posts comes from my own experience trying to keep my life organized, and my years of trying to help others organize.
I helped a woman who lived in her basement who had a B&B. The upstairs was beautiful, with several bedrooms and a living and dining room. Immaculate. Quaint. Quilts, flowered drapes and rugs. Grandfather clocks, fragile china and tea sets. Linens, silver. Landscapes of the manor and herds of sheep on the walls. All the old fashioned decorations. She served her guests delicious breakfasts--actual English breakfasts with eggs, sausages and beans, as well as scrumptious muffins made with sour cream and orange zest.
But my client lived in her basement, had her bed there, and her damp boxes of papers and documents, her makeshift desk. She knew it needed to be different. I helped her as best I could. We spent one whole day in the room where she kept her tools and old paint cans, a room right off her sleeping area, just trying to get her tools in shape so she could find a hammer or screwdriver when she needed it.
My first organizing experience was not really a job. I helped an older friend of mine, who I will call Hazel, get her small apartment organized. Hazel had been a teacher in New York City. After she retired, and when she was no longer able to live on her own, she moved to a small Midwest town to be with her niece.
I met her and started hanging out with her, I suppose you could call it, when I gave her rides to city council meetings to protest widening the state highway through our town. (They widened the highway.) One thing led to another, and I started helping her with little chores--filling her bird bath, or putting up a wire fence around her "Secret Garden" in the undergrowth.
At one point, she invited me in "for tea." When I entered her apartment, my jaw dropped. Boxes lined the hallways. Shelves bulged with stuff, and there was no clear surface where I could sit, while there was one small space on the couch facing the T.V. where I knew Hazel sat. Boxes and stacks of magazines and newspapers towered over that small space, threatening to bury the person who sat in that little cleared spot.
I knew there really was no tea to be had. The stove top was piled high with empty styrofoam boxes from Meals on Wheels. The oven was also jam-packed with pots and pans, plastic bags, and boxes.
Hazel giggled and said, "Maybe there are a few chores you could help me with in here?"
Luckily, Hazel was a neat hoarder. Boxes and stuff, like puzzles and games, shoe boxes, gifts still in their wrapping paper, were neatly stacked. Cartons were labeled. Still, the cupboards were filled with expired can goods. Shelves held at least a hundred rolls of paper towels. (Why so many, I asked her. Just in case, she said.) Piles and piles of notebooks from her teaching days. A huge box of black crayons--only black, no other colors.
What she wanted help with right away, the one chore that was the most urgent, was blackening her address with a permanent marker on the magazines she had received in the mail. Before she would recycle them, this had to be done.
There must have been more than a thousand magazines in that tiny, cramped apartment.
So. No tea. But with black marker in hand--she had at least 50 packages of black markers. I would never want for black markers to carry out my task--I proceeded to cross out her name and address. Hazel would inspect each mailing label.
After two hours, I maybe had crossed out 30-40 labels.
Hazel talked while we worked. Sometimes I had to stop to see something on a self, or under her bed. She had to stop to feed her cat Rusty, locked in one of the rooms--she was afraid mountains of stuff would topple onto him and kill him--She was probably right.
After many many days of crossing out mailing labels--I barely made a dent. I was never able to take any of the magazines away for recycling anyway. There was always "one more article" she wanted to look at again--It finally occurred to me that this whole thing, this organizing, decluttering thing, with Hazel, had nothing to do with organizing or decluttering.
This was about loneliness and the need for companionship. The need to sit and talk with someone.
And after so many other jobs, where I tried my best to help people throw things away and simplify their lives, to organize their shelves and closets, to pare down and "keep only the things they loved," I concluded that for many--like my client who slept alone in the basement, or my client who was a musician but because of losing her sight could no longer play in the orchestra, the man who lived in a tiny trailer and his friend had just left him and moved away--most of these people actually didn't care about paring down--many would follow me out to the truck and haul stuff back into the house that I thought we had agreed to get rid of. These lonely people wanted the warmth of conversation, the companionship of someone who asked them about their lives, even if it was just to gauge their attachment to a glass or a plate.
I know that professional organizers can be successful. I know clients can appreciate what they do. I know we have too much junk in our lives, and I know that a simpler, less cluttered life can be easier to live.
But I also hate that one more thing--figuring out how to clean your closet and put things away--has become just one more cog in the industrial consumer complex, so that you can now buy whole organizing systems for garages and laundry rooms that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and people come to believe that to do it--like exercising--you have to buy all the thousand dollar accessories and books on how to really do it, because just every day folks need professionals and the latest glossy magazine. People can't just figure it out themselves, do it themselves, with very simple tools, like cardboard boxes and plastic bags.
How ironic is the rag Simple. Nothing simple about it.
So. My True Confession. I am the Anti-Organizing Decluttering gal. I'm a professional.
I still have advice. But my first piece of advice is, To Thine Own Self Be True. And as night follows day, you will be true to your stuff. And to your school. And to your egret.
Verleane "did hair," as she called her job as a beautician. My uncle Bunch was a dairy farmer (Yes, Bunch. His real name was Nathan.) He had built a beauty salon on the back of their house, between the house and the milking parlor, just for Verleane to "do hair."
I loved her shop. It was full of what I thought were guilty pleasures. Bottles and bottles of shampoos and conditioners, hair dyes, permanent wave chemicals, straightening chemicals, hair rollers, bobby pins of all sizes. Verleane also "did nails." So, bottles and bottles of nail polish, in all colors, but probably not black. Cuticle conditioners, buffers, nail polish remover, nail strengtheners. One afternoon, when my aunt and mother were drinking coffee and smoking in the kitchen, I went into the salon and painted my nails, then painted them again with whatever mysterious substance was in the other bottles on the tray. I has unknowingly painted over my new nail color with a dissolving substance, so my new nail polish started melting. Needless to say, my aunt was upset, and had to set about cleaning up the mess.
She didn't ban me from the shop, thank goodness.
I also liked to sneak in there and read the True Confessions magazines. Lurid and suggestive stories of illicit affairs, babies born "out of wedlock," high school boys and girls sowing their oats. Nothing explicit, only suggested. That may have been the appeal. I could use my imagination. I was in middle school, but at least a couple of boys and girls were already having sex.
My post today has some of these true confessions, but not what you think. My life has been pretty mundane and unexciting when it comes to secrets, sexual or otherwise. I have none. Secrets, that is. I have three kids and two grandkids, after all.
But you may have guessed already--I was an organizer for a while. Not professional, by any means. But I made banners and fliers, and people paid me to help them get organized. I suppose you could call me a lapsed organizer.
What I talk about in my blog posts comes from my own experience trying to keep my life organized, and my years of trying to help others organize.
I helped a woman who lived in her basement who had a B&B. The upstairs was beautiful, with several bedrooms and a living and dining room. Immaculate. Quaint. Quilts, flowered drapes and rugs. Grandfather clocks, fragile china and tea sets. Linens, silver. Landscapes of the manor and herds of sheep on the walls. All the old fashioned decorations. She served her guests delicious breakfasts--actual English breakfasts with eggs, sausages and beans, as well as scrumptious muffins made with sour cream and orange zest.
But my client lived in her basement, had her bed there, and her damp boxes of papers and documents, her makeshift desk. She knew it needed to be different. I helped her as best I could. We spent one whole day in the room where she kept her tools and old paint cans, a room right off her sleeping area, just trying to get her tools in shape so she could find a hammer or screwdriver when she needed it.
My first organizing experience was not really a job. I helped an older friend of mine, who I will call Hazel, get her small apartment organized. Hazel had been a teacher in New York City. After she retired, and when she was no longer able to live on her own, she moved to a small Midwest town to be with her niece.
I met her and started hanging out with her, I suppose you could call it, when I gave her rides to city council meetings to protest widening the state highway through our town. (They widened the highway.) One thing led to another, and I started helping her with little chores--filling her bird bath, or putting up a wire fence around her "Secret Garden" in the undergrowth.
At one point, she invited me in "for tea." When I entered her apartment, my jaw dropped. Boxes lined the hallways. Shelves bulged with stuff, and there was no clear surface where I could sit, while there was one small space on the couch facing the T.V. where I knew Hazel sat. Boxes and stacks of magazines and newspapers towered over that small space, threatening to bury the person who sat in that little cleared spot.
I knew there really was no tea to be had. The stove top was piled high with empty styrofoam boxes from Meals on Wheels. The oven was also jam-packed with pots and pans, plastic bags, and boxes.
Hazel giggled and said, "Maybe there are a few chores you could help me with in here?"
Luckily, Hazel was a neat hoarder. Boxes and stuff, like puzzles and games, shoe boxes, gifts still in their wrapping paper, were neatly stacked. Cartons were labeled. Still, the cupboards were filled with expired can goods. Shelves held at least a hundred rolls of paper towels. (Why so many, I asked her. Just in case, she said.) Piles and piles of notebooks from her teaching days. A huge box of black crayons--only black, no other colors.
What she wanted help with right away, the one chore that was the most urgent, was blackening her address with a permanent marker on the magazines she had received in the mail. Before she would recycle them, this had to be done.
There must have been more than a thousand magazines in that tiny, cramped apartment.
So. No tea. But with black marker in hand--she had at least 50 packages of black markers. I would never want for black markers to carry out my task--I proceeded to cross out her name and address. Hazel would inspect each mailing label.
After two hours, I maybe had crossed out 30-40 labels.
Hazel talked while we worked. Sometimes I had to stop to see something on a self, or under her bed. She had to stop to feed her cat Rusty, locked in one of the rooms--she was afraid mountains of stuff would topple onto him and kill him--She was probably right.
After many many days of crossing out mailing labels--I barely made a dent. I was never able to take any of the magazines away for recycling anyway. There was always "one more article" she wanted to look at again--It finally occurred to me that this whole thing, this organizing, decluttering thing, with Hazel, had nothing to do with organizing or decluttering.
This was about loneliness and the need for companionship. The need to sit and talk with someone.
And after so many other jobs, where I tried my best to help people throw things away and simplify their lives, to organize their shelves and closets, to pare down and "keep only the things they loved," I concluded that for many--like my client who slept alone in the basement, or my client who was a musician but because of losing her sight could no longer play in the orchestra, the man who lived in a tiny trailer and his friend had just left him and moved away--most of these people actually didn't care about paring down--many would follow me out to the truck and haul stuff back into the house that I thought we had agreed to get rid of. These lonely people wanted the warmth of conversation, the companionship of someone who asked them about their lives, even if it was just to gauge their attachment to a glass or a plate.
I know that professional organizers can be successful. I know clients can appreciate what they do. I know we have too much junk in our lives, and I know that a simpler, less cluttered life can be easier to live.
But I also hate that one more thing--figuring out how to clean your closet and put things away--has become just one more cog in the industrial consumer complex, so that you can now buy whole organizing systems for garages and laundry rooms that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and people come to believe that to do it--like exercising--you have to buy all the thousand dollar accessories and books on how to really do it, because just every day folks need professionals and the latest glossy magazine. People can't just figure it out themselves, do it themselves, with very simple tools, like cardboard boxes and plastic bags.
How ironic is the rag Simple. Nothing simple about it.
So. My True Confession. I am the Anti-Organizing Decluttering gal. I'm a professional.
I still have advice. But my first piece of advice is, To Thine Own Self Be True. And as night follows day, you will be true to your stuff. And to your school. And to your egret.
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