Small Boxes for Precious Things: Rejecting the Home-Organizing-Solutions Industry.

     I’ve always been really good at cleaning my room. I’ll clean it really well about once a month. The rest of the month I let it fall into disarray again until I absolutely can’t stand it and I lose my tinted lip balm in my own hand because I can’t think straight. Part of the issue is that I strongly dislike minimalism. I also once heard someone say they hoard who they used to be, which I related strongly to. I want my space to be filled with trinkets and treasures and nonsense. Pretty earrings that have no pair, the smallest most impractical picture frame, every piece of mail I’ve ever received, a half-dozen half-filled notebooks, sparkly Olympic athlete stickers, and Wizard of Oz stationery. I recognize that if I throw stuff out I won’t have as much to clean, but I’ll also have fewer things to hold. Maybe you wouldn’t keep a small ziplock bag filled with green sea glass that a boy collected for you on a beach when you were 17 and jingled in the pockets of your fall and winter jackets but I would. My previous solution to this sparkly sticker and sea glass conundrum was blindly purchasing Dollarama home organizing solutions. The issue always was that my treasures never quite fit the plastic trays meant for bullet journals and ballpoint pens. There was disconnection between the contained and the container. It felt like nothing was ever returning to its home, so things remained scattered on my floor. I was feigning organization by arranging memories and nonsense into trays and grids and straight lines. Today I finally came up with the solution of small boxes for precious things. Simple as that. A box with a lid. Cardboard, tin, glass, or wood. A bright pink Hello Kitty pencil box. Anything at all that makes you happy to hold. They shouldn’t match either. That is key. Then the container must become a ritual of using the object. For instance, my stickers and stationery are in a light blue cardboard box that also holds what’s left of some ridiculously overpriced paper my dad bought for me. I need to use both my hands to lift the lid off, set it aside, then I can shuffle through stamps and dried flowers and whatnot before not-so-carefully returning them to their home and shutting the drawer. Before, “organizing” was lining up my stamps and sticker sheets parallel with the stapler and notebook in my drawer. My memories are now loosely collected rather than tediously aligned and I feel a lot better because of it. Go collect some small boxes for your precious things.