“Ooh, this looks nice. Let me put it in my table drawer.”
“This doc seems important; I better keep it in my file drawer (to never see it again).”
“This looks like something I might use (never). I better put it in my dresser. ”
Has any of the above happened to you, or is it just me? Unless you are a hoarder, that’s what commonly happens when you don’t move houses. Things stay. Lots and lots of things. Especially in drawers.
When you live in one house for years or probably your whole life, things just seem to settle in comfortably. There are cabinets, shelves and drawers that house various objects. When we store them, we do so with the aim of using them for a long time, but unfortunately, with time, things get redundant. We end up storing things that we don’t need. Since we are functioning normally and aren’t moving anywhere, the need to clear rarely exists. Hence, the object obeys Newton’s first law of motion and stays where it is unless an external force (me) wakes up one day and goes, “I am going to clean my drawers!”
I am a fairly neat person when it comes to keeping a room clean. On the outside, it looks sorted and well kept, but the darkness lies inside. (Gee, why does that sound like my mental health?) Inside my wardrobe/table drawers is where clutter hides. I have the craziest of crazy things piled in them but the silver lining is that each drawer is category specific. So, though I might not know where exactly an object is, I will know which drawer it’s in. Narrows down the search, doesn’t it? But, I was tired of all the searching. I wanted it to be so organized that I just needed to open and pick something up with ease. That’s when I thought, “Alright, let’s get started.”
The last time I got into a drawer cleaning activity was years ago. So long ago that I don’t remember when. Table or wardrobe drawers are those nicely tucked boxes that help you conceal a lot of things, most of which are things you rarely use. I was quite inspired by ‘home organizer’ reality programs where they make sloppy rooms (and cupboards) peachy. Now, obviously I cannot stretch to the extent to which they renovate, but I was motivated to work with it at a smaller level. There is one key thing to know when you are sorting and cleaning cupboards. It’s all about storage bins and trays. You can have multiple things that you wish to keep in a drawer, as long as you have neatly stored them in boxes or trays (depending on space). For my cleaning, a lot of products were recycled to serve as storage boxes and trays.
My cleaning involved a lot of memory walkdowns. I have things that go back to my school days! These are mostly tiny objects, say, like a keychain or a collectible. Each of them has a story and brought a wide smile to my face. Imagine cleaning and smiling like a weirdo. No wonder it took a whole day to clean one drawer! I disposed of quite a few things and moved a lot of things to the ceiling shelves in neat covers. I retained what I needed, which also seemed quite a lot (Frozen’s ‘Let it Go’ is clearly not for me), in a neat, convenient manner. I recycled old packages. For example, I tore an old watch box, cleared the insides and made it work as two tiny boxes. The only place I spent was in buying small plastic trays. I needed them for sorting stationery. I brought as much order as possible. Category-wise drawer with sub-category objects was the goal. In a jewellery drawer, your sub-categorization will be earrings, chains, bangles,etc. In a stationary drawer, you’ll have pens, pencils, diaries, etc. sorted into separate stacks.
Surprisingly, I enjoyed the clearing and organizing process for almost all drawers. The most annoying one was the file cabinet. The amount of papers and envelopes that I had was unthinkable. I had piles of xerox copies of id cards, certificates and resumes. Don’t you think that the number of resumes one has is inversely proportional to the number of job interviews one receives. You have surplus resumes when you aren’t looking for anything! I even found my resume that I prepared while in college. I kept them probably because I considered them holy. I believe that you can’t dispose of important documents (no matter how irrelevant they become). What’s worse, you can’t just throw away id docs in the dustbin. You gotta destroy them. That’s when I became the human paper shredder. I sat for hours tearing docs. Not the plain old ‘one rip a sheet’ kind. One paper was torn via five folds, five times. Initially, the “kirrr..” sounded fun. But, after what I assume was a thousand tears, it was mind-numbing. Somehow I pushed through and completed the activity. Two drawers of files were sorted into one with one drawer to spare.
In a span of 10 days I cleared more than 10 drawers. When I say clear, I mean that’s the best possible setup with the space and means available. It was top-notch considering how I have lived all these years with stuffed and cramped drawers. Like a milestone in a game, it was a true ‘Achievement Unlocked’ moment. Therefore, I self-acclaim the title of ‘Miss Organizer’?
Next Stop- Clothes.
