NEXT AVENUE SPECIAL SECTION
Closet Therapy: When It’s Time to Throw a Few Things Out By Laura Petiford
Lately, my life has felt uncomfortably snug. Like the waistband of how I spend my days is squeezing each passing moment into a muffin top of unpleasantness. I feel constrained by having too many things. Things have seemingly engaged in a mutiny, threatening to overtake me, inciting an urgent need to purge my surroundings and reclaim my rightful reign. The long-tenured books huddled on the shelves flanking my television suddenly occupying far too much space. I cleared them in an afternoon with the conviction of a four-star general.
Things have seemingly engaged in a mutiny, threatening to overtake me, inciting an urgent need to purge my surroundings and reclaim my rightful reign.
Accumulated over the years, they've pizzazzed any lackluster ensemble with a simple draping of cloth around my neck or shoulders. Pulling them from their hooks, I held each one, feeling the weight and the texture. Memories came. The long mustard-colored scarf, a gift from a former friend, the unworn accessory is enduring far beyond the length of our friendship. A flouncy black one from my cousin in Germany, a touchstone to a family I barely know, and all I have left of my mother. The sheer rectangle, with strands of thick yarn protruding here and there, purchased on the streets of Paris tendered with francs, reminded me I had lived there once. All of these I kept; the feelings and thoughts they evoked were part of the fabric of my story. Those with no memory associated with them no longer held any aesthetic or emotional appeal. They were easy to relinquish to the toss pile.
Breathing relief, I still felt an internal niggling. There was no escaping that something else I had yet to name was happening. Something to do with the drumbeat of passing time echoing in my ears, deepening a need for more and less. I felt drawn to the bedroom closet of my 100-year-old home to see what the motherload of excess could reveal. Surveilling the converted tiny bedroom, now a decent-sized walk-in, I eyed my scarves hanging in multitudes upon hooks protruding from an over- the-door hanger like a row of prominent noses dripping fabric and knitted yarn.
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