By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and Northwest Arkansas mom of 3
About a week ago, I got a text from a close friend saying she was embarrassed that I saw her sunroom in its current state when I took care of her dogs while she was out of town. I rewound my internal brain tape of her sunroom, which I found to be normal in every way. Then I replied to her text with the following admission of my own:
“As you know, I also have a sunroom. Currently, this is what’s out there: a futon our college kid couldn’t fit into her apartment, a weight bench no one ever uses but means to, a janky recliner that Tom didn’t want anymore but hasn’t sold in case one of the kids wants it eventually, and a fully decorated Christmas tree wearing a dark green blob of a storage cover. It isn’t pretty. Your sunroom makes a lot more sense than mine.”
For those of us lucky enough to live in a house or apartment, there’s often “that one room” — the room that seems magnetically charged to attract the odds and ends of our lives. The place where unmade decisions simmer while we ignore them. (Should we keep the weight bench or sell it?) It’s an extra-large version of a kitchen junk drawer, only with walls and square footage.
In some homes, that black sheep room is the garage. In others, it’s the guest bedroom you’d never actually let a guest lay eyes on, much less sleep in. In the house where I grew up, it was the room my brother left behind after he graduated high school. That room got so crowded with miscellaneous stuff that there were times we could barely open the door to squeeze inside. The worse it got, the more we all avoided it.
Now that Tom and I are empty nesters, I have a new understanding of how “junk rooms” get started. Kids grow up and eventually move out, but they don’t take all their stuff with them when they go. And a combination of nostalgia and “just in case” thinking makes parents hang onto leftover stuff far longer than we should.
Once a space falls into disarray, the laws of physics take over. A room in messy motion stays in motion, accumulating stuff we don’t want to deal with but also aren’t ready to trash, sell, or donate. The sloppy snowball rolls down the hill until an external force stops it or changes its course.
What kind of external force ends this haphazard headache? Well, one time my dad’s overstuffed backyard storage shed was literally blown away by a tornado, which isn’t an ideal way to get rid of a cluttered space but, admittedly, quite effective.
But without an act of God to do the dirty work, most of us have to muster the determination to be the external force that stops a room’s downhill slide. Some of us get to that pivotal point only when our own frustration with the room’s chaotic condition outweighs the convenience of using it as a dumping ground – a haven for procrastination. When you reach that tipping point, the cleaning process can feel less like drudgery and more like relief.
I’m a firm believer that in-depth cleaning and organizing can be surprisingly therapeutic. There are plenty of times in life when we can’t do anything to improve a terrible situation or heal our own broken hearts. But we can always clean a room (or one corner of a room). We can always create some order in a space where none existed. We can prove to ourselves we’re strong enough to begin, even when it feels impossible.
And once you begin, the laws of physics suddenly switch to your side. A body in motion stays in motion, right? And even if it takes longer than expected, beginning a hard thing is almost always the toughest part. Once we climb over our own mental hurdles, we’re more than halfway there. Godspeed, my friends.
Gwen Rockwood is a syndicated freelance columnist. Email her at gwenrockwood5@gmail.com. Her books are available on Amazon.
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