Cleaning my closet has always been an event.

Saturdays were always cleaning day in my mother's household. How that woman didn't have the physique of a fitness model I'll never know, but she was the hardest worker I've ever seen. Every Saturday was a DEEP clean. The floors? You could eat off of 'em. She physically moved every piece of heavy, heavy furniture to make sure that she vacuumed the carpet beneath. The old wooden kitchen cupboards always shone with her elbow grease. Throughout the day on Saturday, she would always find another project to add to her tasks such as scrub the rarely used good china in the top cupboard or organizing the coat closet by season.

It should come as no surprise then that my closet is organized by clothing type (makes no sense to put a dress right next to a cardigan) and then color (rainbow order, of course). With the level of detail I put into order, nobody wants to touch my closet. When I was a child, and I got behind in my laundry-putting-away, the task of all that sorting seemed way too daunting, and it seemed like an acceptable solution to instead let it pile up in baskets. Left long enough, my mother would set aside a good part of her coveted Saturday to help me (light a fire under me) to get back atop the situation. I was always left with a feeling of relief once the closet was fully organized again. The memory had me putting away clothes right away for months, for fear of that awful feeling of messiness.

Let's just say that people's behavior patterns don't vary that much as they age. I take daily medication that makes me tired, so I would probably feel overwhelmed even if I worked only two hours a day. Instead I work full time and am a full time student. When I am prioritizing my tasks to complete with what free time I have after my obligations, I'll be honest with you that spending time with Nick and Sophie comes before the almighty closet. Unfortunately, as in childhood, after I have missed a couple weeks of attending to the complex organizational system that they say only I can decipher, I am flustered and unable to think of laundry without becoming catatonic. The clean laundry piles up. I start looking through baskets to find the day's outfit.

Today, Nick asked if he could help me with the closet. Déjà vu or what? I accepted his help, but dragged my feet up to the small bedroom where my closet it located. So many clothes, so few hangers. After a few hours in the generous walk-in closet, it is shiny and new again. The bad news is that my skirt accumulation has been a little out of control (I got a new job!—but first I had to dress the part for those silly interviews), and I no longer have the skirt hanger supply to support the numbers. The good news is that I do not need any running pants. Turns out that I have upwards of 20 pairs and should cancel my plans to shop for more. Who knew?

After all the clothes were put away, Nick started going through all my old purses and organized them on the top shelf. Even though I was thinking mean things because he was all up in my closet business and I was tired and sore, he saved me the expense of a new purse. I was looking for a new one in a certain style a little while ago, and lo and behold I must have been in the kick for that style purse like four years ago too.

Will I ever perfect my closet etiquette? Probably not. I think I probably freaked out when my rattle supply backed up on me in infancy, too. It's just me—if I don't have time to make it perfect, I ignore it until the imperfection of ignoring it bugs someone else enough to say, "Let me help." I guess the moral of the story is to be grateful for the people in your life who are willing to save you from yourself.