The Great 2010 Clothes Reorganization Plan

So I had all these ambitious plans last weekend to get my spring cleaning/clothes swapping chores started and finished. Well, I got it started…but finished is another story. Now another weekend is looming and I’m truly hoping I can get things done since I’m great at procrastination, but also don’t like having Incompletes on my “To Do” list.

Plus, I hate wearing turtleneck sweaters in 68 degree weather.

Last Saturday I made up what I thought was a relatively short list for the downstairs so I could concentrate on the closet and dresser drawers. Downstairs chores included dusting, organizing the pantry and polishing the silver. And, yeah, so there were only 10 pieces of silver that needed to be polished, but since there was no actual silver showing on them, it took a little more polishing time than I’d estimated.

When I finally headed upstairs it was getting later in the day and my energy was ebbing, but I was still determined to make a dent in the Great 2010 Clothes Reorganization Plan.

I started on the laundry, swapped comforters (heavyweight to lightweight) and cleaned the bathroom before turning to the dresser and the closet. And sighed at the daunting task before me.

To enhance my Clothes Reorganization Plan experience, I decided that I needed some music to make the chore seem a little more palatable. So I powered up my computer to get to my iTunes library. Naturally, iTunes had to be updated, which took what seemed like 2.3 hours to load. I wasn’t ambitiously working during this process because I was sort of “waiting” for music. So I fiddled around checking e-mail, updating Facebook and playing computer solitaire. All the while knowing, of course, how much work I still had left to do.

Finally, the system was updated, but then I had to decide which type of music would be most suitable for Clothes Reorganization. After much internal debate, I finally selected some classic Motown. It was now about 4PM. (Yes, I am very, very good at procrastinating.)

So I started with the dresser. I folded sweaters and other assorted winter pieces into nice neat piles ready to be put into the storage bins and swapped with the summer clothes…but that’s about as far as I got. I know! All that prep work and careful music selection for nothin’!

But I had (what I thought was) a good excuse – the bins were in the garage hidden underneath boxes of high school yearbooks and miscellaneous Christmas decorations. (Hey, I never said we were good at logistical planning!) Plus, I would’ve needed to move my car out of the garage to even get close to them. But before that I would’ve had to move Vince’s car out of the driveway. That was just too much to contemplate that late in the afternoon. Besides, there was no Motown music playing in the garage.

I’m sure Vince would’ve been happy to help with this logistical nightmare, but he was in the middle of deep cleaning the downstairs carpeting. I started to ask him for assistance, but the absolutely horrified expression on his face at how filthy the carpeting was stopped me and I didn’t think it was a good idea to interrupt his progress. (The downstairs carpet, by the way, looks 1000% better!)

So all week, my dresser drawers have been relatively empty and I haven’t had any warm weather clothes to wear.

Fortunately, we have had a couple mornings when it was only 30-something degrees when I got up, so I was able to grab one of the sweaters from the pile. It was a little toasty in the afternoons when it warmed up to 68 degrees, but at least I didn’t break any indecent exposure laws. I don’t think the cops would’ve cared that I ran out of weekend and that the bins in the garage had to be excavated first.

Anyway, Friday is here once again and I really, truly plan to get this Plan finished before the end of the weekend. Except we have dinner plans with friends tonight, and I have a baby shower to attend tomorrow. And call me crazy, but I’m kind of thinking that re-organizing the dresser drawers is not really a Saturday night activity.

Ah well, there is always Sunday. Maybe we’ll manage to get up early enough to attend the crack o’ dawn service at St. Andrew’s, which would give us the rest of the day to accomplish something. The good news is that I don’t have silver to polish this week, which should free up a little extra time. And, to the best of my recollection, we have not rolled around in mud and tracked it in, so Vince won’t be deep cleaning the carpet. Perhaps I can persuade him to help with the bin excavation.

If not, maybe we’ll just have to turn the spare bedroom into Jane’s Closet. We can build racks to hang all four seasons of clothes and shelving units where I can store turtlenecks right next to the tank tops. And then we can build shoe shelves for flip flops and boots alike.

Yeah. We’ll get right on that. But first let me pick out some shelf-building music...