About 5 years ago I went to an amazing Healer (capitalized for emphasis) at a wellness spa in Sedona, Arizona called Mii Amo (www.miiamo.com).

And among the things she told me – was to “declutter” and to “clean my closets”, and that it would help me and maybe even change my life.  At the time – I was so stressed and overwhelmed between work and children and a failing marriage that I did not appreciate the message and the metaphor. BUT I am a good student – and if you, my teacher, whom I respect and trust tell me to do something – I am going to do it.  And well.  Or at least I am going to try hard.

So I came home from the retreat and began cleaning my closets. There were many – and they contained different aspects of my life. It takes a lot longer than you might think because part of cleaning the closet is finding the shoe box filled with letters and photographs of old friends and loves and times past.   And of course you end up sitting in the closet with a cup of hot tea reading through these missives, thinking of the old days and how you got to be here now on the closet floor.

Then there are the clothes – which is not just a walk down memory lane, but a fashion show of the times past and reminder of how you have changed.  The structured suits of the 90s with the big shoulder pads, the skinny jeans, the bell bottom jeans, the high waisted jeans, the Doc Martens, clogs, Dr. Scholls, and on and on.

They tell you to get rid of anything that you haven’t worn in 5 years. What about 20 years? That seems more obvious yet somehow harder to do sometimes.  You relive styles and events – the bridesmaid dress you never got rid of, friends with the perfect most blessed marriage. Clothes that don’t fit and haven’t fit for years. Either you have lost weight and are scared you will gain it back – or you have gained weight yet aspire to get back to your 20 year old body. Clothes you can’t bear to look at because the last time you wore them was a funeral.  Or  clothes that remind you of your happiest days – your sons graduation, the job interview where you killed it, your first stand-up comedy, what you wore at your first half-marathon, and your last marathon.

Old keys, photographs, notes, bags with lipsticks that went missing.  Things you bought and never took out of the packaging.  Things you have forgotten about.  Your history.

Your happiness.  Your love.  Your memories.  Your now.

And you sort, slowly.  Things that must go.  Things that must stay.   And the unsure pile.  Then where do the things go? Garbage? Good will? your friends? Your children?  It takes a tremendous amount of energy and inevitably you will arrive at decision fatigue – the point at which you can no longer make a sane decision and someone else has to take over or your head will explode (or as my daughter would say – you will pop an aneurysm).

And all that sorting, thinking, reminiscing, makes you think of your path and how you came to be here, now, sitting on the closet floor, with a pile of memories and triumphs and lost moments.  That reflection on our process of how we came to this moment is so important yet so overlooked – for most of us just keep our heads down and keep moving forward.

Clutter confuses us.  Chaos and mess are not settling to the eyes or the mind.  A sense or order and priority are important for most human beings to feel peaceful and settled .  The Japanese principle of Kaizen is based on the idea that numerous small improvements done continuously are more effective than big improvements done sporadically.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen