I wonder how many other people are like me in this sense: when it’s time to clean and reorganize the closet, the first thing that has to happen is every single item has to get pulled out of the closet and thrown onto the floor.
Individual boxes are emptied. Drawers pulled out. It all goes into the One Great Heap. No rhyme, no reason. The closet becomes barren, and the floor becomes a maelstrom.
Then, patterns emerge. I can see the volume and shape of things. I can see from my mountaintop what deserves to return, and in what order it will do so. I can hold the whole of it in my mind, and it falls back into place so much easier than if I tried to simply move things around and re-organize from within.
This is true of everything, not just closets.
To restore order to a broken system, you must destroy that system. The realities of life sometimes necessitate that you don’t do this – but more rarely than you think! Quite frequently, depending on what you define as the borders of the system in question, you can rip it all up to see the true shape of it, unhindered by the detritus it’s gathered along the way.
It’s clarifying. Regenerative. It’s like conquering a new land, homesteading your own life. Don’t dismiss the power of it.
The Opportunity Machine 