It just creeps up on ya, ya know?
One day you have your shirts and sweat pants all neat and tidy. You have a special event to attend, like a Meet The Moms Soccer Mom Extravaganza. You can't decide what to wear so you try on several tops. None of them will do!
You don't want to look TOO Momish or too detached or too whorish or too girly or too sporty or too busty or too flat or too fat or too skinny or too desperate.
But you ARE desperate. To fit in. You want to be THE soccer mom. The one in the perfect shirt. The one everyone wants to befriend but secretly envies...
You pull shirts from the bottom of your neatly stacked piles. You're FRANTIC. Sweating, even.
You've GOT TO GET THIS RIGHT!! The Moms will never accept you if you show up in just ANYTHING!
You finally end up in a black crew neck t-shirt from The Gap. It's slimming. Safe. Off you go to Meet The Moms.
Do you look back at the mess you've created?
Yes.
You'll fold it later.
But later never comes. Never lasts at least a few months in this instance...
Your schedule is full to the brim with church picnics, gossip parties, baby showers and holy than thou socials.
When at home you must attend to husband, children, homework (even though YOU have already graduated from 3rd grade), dinner, toilets, reading for book club, reading for spiritual uplift, OK magazine and blogging. There is NO TIME!
There is simply too much to do. You have no energy for the pile of chaos in your wardrobe. You shut the doors. Out of sight. Out of mind.
The Pile is a constant reminder of all your failures and short comings.
Every time you dig in said Pile for a shirt or a ratty pair of sweats you are left unsettled. You really should organize this mess.
You wonder if The Pile says something about who you are as a person. You decide it does. You don't ever want anyone to know what a mess you are inside your wardrobe.
"I'll get to it tomorrow," you promise day after day.
Then you have a dream that you are literally DROWNING in a sea of knits and clever graphic tees. They are strangling you within an inch of your over-scheduled life.
You get up at 2am and begin sorting.
"I'm getting rid of YOU," you say to a slutty red tank top.
"We've had a lot of great memories," you say to a purple pilling cardigan. "But I've got to let you go."
"It's not you. It's me," you explain to a how low can you go skinny black V-neck. "I just think we are heading in different directions... We've grown apart...".
"I loved you once," you murmur to a slightly inappropriate graphic tee with bleach stains. "But I'm a different person now. I've changed. And so have you...".
"I think you should see other people," you say to a plastic bag full of old friends as you drop them off at the local Salvation Army.
PS I also cleaned out both of my refrigerators. I feel whole again.
