Ticking Clock

I chose a weekend my husband was off backpacking with his father. I suppose I should've enjoyed the neat, solitary space knowing that soon my tiny home would again be cluttered with camping gear, dirty clothes and excessive testosterone. But I didn't.

Instead I decided it was time to sort my closet. For years I've organized my clothes as fashion experts advise - pants, skirts, dresses, tops, jackets - each in neat groups and sorted by color left to right, light to dark. A bit obsessive, but at least I could find stuff in my tiny closet.

What I couldn't do was pull together a decent outfit in the time I allowed myself each morning, time usually cut short because I spent too much of it scribbling in a notebook as the clock ticked on, oblivious to my dilemma. Despite my obsessive organization, I still wasted several precious minutes trying to figure out what to put on as my carpool partner waited on a rainy dark street corner. Poor gal has waited far too many accumulated minutes in the past two years. When fall quarter began this year, I decided it was time to make a change.

I pulled each article of clothing from my closet and started putting together outfits on every flat surface in the house - bed, kitchen table, sofa, dining room table - trying to find just the right combination of pants and tops. A huge puzzle of clothes. I figured if I could make ten decent outfits I'd have it covered for two weeks. I'd donate whatever I hadn't worn for a year to charity and stuff everything else into a storage closet. Then at the end of a two-week period, I could reshuffle the outfits and restock my wardrobe.

I'm happy to report that I actually came up with twenty outfits, now all lined up like perfect little soldiers waiting to march off to work each morning. A month's worth of outfits. Pull one out, put it on, out the door I go. No more cold, wet carpool partner. Unless, of course, I keep writing, oblivious to the ticking clock.