The problem with cleaning closets

This weekend, while Nana and Papaw were busy being entertained by Squirt and the hubs was quietly recovering from what must be heat exhaustion, I started cleaning out my closet.  I do this pretty regularly.  I mean not regularly enough so that you can just pop into the Plump place and find an immaculately organized closet on any ol’ day but regularly enough that the clothing donation bin knows my car.*  I like to throw things out.  Purging (of closets, medicine cabinets, the pantry. . . pretty much any potential mess that hides behind doors) makes me feel like a better person.  Yes, I know that’s silly and probably something I should get looked at, but instead of questioning or analyzing, I just go with it.  I feel better when things are clean and organized.  Of course, this purging often occurs in response to a seriously shameful mess.  I’m talking the open-the-door-and-get-hit-by-a-soccer-ball-falling-from-the-top-of-the-pile-of-rubble kind of mess.  And this weekend’s purging was no exception.

My closet housed fossil record layers of pre-pregnancy summer tops, giant maternity sweaters, both pre-pregnancy and maternity jeans (jumbled into the same quasi-stack), pre-pregnancy (and never again to be worn by my feet) shoes, and a giant pile of whoknowswhat that landed there the last time I had to do a quick clean-up of my room for company.  It was worse than any teenager’s closet.  Truly.  And because I’ve been wearing the same three pairs of pajama pants or maternity capris and alternating the same four tank tops since the baby was born eleven weeks ago (HOLY CRAP), and because in just a couple of weeks I’ll be returning to work (HOLY CRAPOLA), and because breast feeding has killed nearly all thirty-four pounds of the maternity weight but done nothing for the new configuration of soft spots on my body, I really needed to get in there and figure out what seasonally and work-appropriate clothing I had and whether it would fit.

So here’s the problem. . .

After organizing everything into garbage, donation, giant maternity, probably-not-getting-there-again skinny, maybe next summer, and doesn’t-really-fit-right-but-covers-everything-as-it-should piles, I have four pairs of ill-fitting and faded maternity jeans that could be worn to work. . . in a pinch. . . on a tired day when other things are more important than my feelings about how I look.  Nope — there’s not another sentence coming to cover the tops.  Well, ok — there are two tops that I could wear unbuttoned at the top with a nursing cami under if I had to, but that pretty clearly shows that I’m unable to cover my newly giant breastfeeding boobs.  And I have some cardigans that I could throw over something if the heat index weren’t over a hundred degrees and I didn’t mind displaying my newly soft center.

Yeah.  What I’m saying here is that I have nothing to wear.  But I do have one seriously clean closet.

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*Eeep!  Correction:  the clothing donation bin used to know my car.  It has not yet seen the new gifted car from that sweet, sweet Amanda.

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