I grew up in chaos. I know, that’s an extremely ambiguous description, if you can even call it a description.

My definition

Let me elaborate; I grew up in a loving home filled with the chaos of stuff. The amount of physical clutter was overwhelming at times, but it was all we knew, all I knew. My dad LOVED antique furniture & growing up in New England meant there was an abundance of antique shops available to pursue at any given moment.

My dad went so far as to plan family vacations around antiquing. Yeah, we were THAT family. Whether we headed to Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, it really didn’t matter, as long as we stopped at a minimum of 3-4 antique shops on the trip, he was happy. We always had to pack light so there would be space for potential treasures in the family minivan.

Don’t get me wrong, I love antique furniture, it’s beautiful, but when it’s everywhere you lose some appreciation for it. The glamour fades & you realize it’s nothing more than wood held together with some fancy dovetail joints with metal fixtures or glass inserts. Sometimes it smells like musty mothballs from the back of your grandma’s closet. When that glamour fades it almost instantaneously morphs from beautiful & functional furniture to an eyesore, or perhaps a blockade.

My normal

I always tell people I grew up not understanding the “normal” width of a hallway & while we all might laugh about that statement, it’s sadly true. Armoires, dressers, & bookcases lined the hallways in both houses I grew up in & then he brought all that furniture when they moved in with me in 2011.

Don’t worry, I’m not gonna take you down memory lane & talk about all the places I’ve lived. That would take way too long & no one really wants to read all that. When you’re in the military, you move, a lot. You know the drill.

Today

Fast forward to present day. I’m all grown up, live in a 3 bedroom house in North Carolina, & still have the same great job I had in Virginia (I just transferred offices). You may be asking yourself if my house is organized & neat since that’s what I lacked most of my life. Well…

Not yet, but for the first time in my life, I asked for help & hired a professional organizer. I’m a boss at maintaining a system, but not so much with the implementation. My master bedroom is currently a work in progress & no longer a complete fucking mess. I am continually working on reducing the amount of furniture I own as I organize & redesign my space for me. I have grandiose plans & even though I haven’t gotten past the ideas in my head & the drawings in my notebook, I can see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Yes, stuff is still scattered everywhere during this process, yet now I find myself at peace with the process, instead of in constant distress.

My son’s bedroom, on the other hand, is a typical teenage boy’s room full of stuff. Legos & other toys are strewn everywhere while his bed sits neatly in the middle. It works for him since he’s only here part-time. Hopefully this summer we can start organizing his space together, but only time will tell. Until then, the chaos lives on in his space.

That last room

The third bedroom is my home office, but it hasn’t always been an office. When I first moved to North Carolina in early 2019 it was my mama’s bedroom. Her space, with her bulky antique dresser she had to put in the closet & her fancy twin-sized pineapple bed. She too was used to the chaos of stuff. So much so that she carefully arranged her room, Tetris style, to fit everything. Why? Because it was comfortable. I am also quite good at furniture Tetris & it has helped over the years, but I digress. Back to the bedroom.

On May 6th, 2020 I started converting my mama’s bedroom into a home office & she moved to her new makeshift bedroom on the main floor. I broke down her “princess bed” & moved everything into my tiny one-car garage. She insisted that I donate her dresser & desk because she knew I didn’t want them & that she couldn’t take it with her where she was going.

On March 17th, 2020 chaos reared its ugly head & turned my world upside down once again. This time though, it was mama & she was given a mere three months to live. On May 6th, 2020 she started her hospice journey. This time, I was ready. This time, I was prepared mentally & physically to become her “angel in the end,” like she had been for dad.

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