Wee! Wee! Wee! All The Way Home…

Each morning I wake up and stare at this bookshelf sitting across from my bed. Yes, I said bookshelf. However, this shelf now carries scads of books, a clock radio, an old lamp from that Swedish furniture company, a piggy bank, ballet shoes, figurines, photo albums, an on-the-go IPod dock and a framed etching of Britney Spears beating in Kevin Federline’s car with her umbrella that I received as a 30th birthday gift. This can pretty much sum up what I’m dealing with in my bedroom and to some degree the rest of my home. I’m a junkie. Not that kind! You know, I just collect and keep and attach myself to things.

Every morning that I wake up and see this “book” shelf is another day I am reminded of how cluttered my life is and what I am putting off and hiding away inside Ingrid Michaelson’s proverbial bookshelf. Piles of letters and bills sit underneath piles of folded (hopefully) jeans and summer shorts. Clean laundry that made it home but never made it to its proper place. There is something to a cluttered home equaling a cluttered mind. If you have no order in your space, how can you have it out there in the great wide open?

This morning when I woke up and stared that piggy bank in the eye for the 1000th time I decided to do something about it. I was no longer going to be hostage to his frozen little smile. Is he laughing at me? Is he a he? Piggy banks are not gender specific. In any case, I wasn’t going to let him and that bookshelf dictate another day! I jumped up from my bed with an energy usually reserved for the pizza delivery man ringing my door bell, stretched and got to work. I started by pulling everything off of the shelves and took a good hard look at those beautiful empty spaces. I was only going to fill them with what the good Lord intended to go there. Books. And only the ones I will read again or use as reference. The ballet shoes and figurines and other non-daily used items could be stored away neatly and tightly into my old steamer trunk. Only to come out IF and when I need them again.

And you know what happened? After I cleaned up that shelf and straightened up the rest of my room I had the vim and verve to get stuff done! I went out and paid bills and even took care of a doctor’s appointment that afternoon that I had been putting off for over a year. These things had been sitting on my shoulders and I let them sit, accumulating, along with those dance shoes and those books and the loose change. Tomorrow, who knows? Maybe I’ll clean out underneath my bed and then get going on those college applications. The possibilities are endless! Now, why do I have an urge to break out those ballet slippers already…