No Catawampus Here!

Last Wednesday, the dictionary.com Word of the Day was “catawampus.” How do I know this? Jason Gay mentioned it in his Wall Street Journal article about one of the players on the Wisconsin Badgers basketball team as March Madness is descending. (I was a college counselor – I know my mascots. U.C. Santa Cruz’s is the banana slug.) What am I doing reading a sports page? (It’s a single page in our edition of the WSJ that we get in the mail.) I’ll read anything that Jason Gay writes because he is hilarious! Also, the sports page is on the back of the page with the crossword puzzle, which doesn’t go straight to the recycle pile.

Anyway, in some convoluted way, that excellent word, catawampus, got me to thinking about the book that has been on the nonfiction bestseller lists for ages – The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Now mind you, I haven’t read the book, but at some point I read a tip from it that originally struck me as nutty – the one about rolling your shirts to organize your drawers. (Maybe we’re supposed to roll everything, but let’s not push this.)

Part of the process of moving from a much larger house to our little house involved culling a haphazard wardrobe. Then, after congratulating myself on lightening the load, I had to face the chest of drawers in my New Hampshire bedroom that was to somehow contain what was left. Hah! I piled and squished my way through the process, then realized that I would never be able to get to anything except for whatever was on top that popped out when I wrestled open a drawer. That’s not good. (My highest score on the GRE was the logic section.) Enter the Tidying Up lady and her tip. In a fit of desperation and despair, I gave the shirt rolling a try. Yep. I’m sold.

So here’s the thing: it takes all of two seconds (I counted) to roll a t-shirt, and when it’s placed in the drawer with my other t-shirts, I can see it and easily get to it. I also could see that I had too many green t-shirts. Good to know. A couple of those went to the transfer station’s clothing bin. (Do not call it the dump –that’s another blog.) Also, travel experts advise rolling clothes for packing in suitcases to maximize space and minimize wrinkles. It’s kind of cool to grab a shirt roll from the drawer and place it in a suitcase. It’s even cooler if you’re packing in February to go visit your brother in Florida. What made me think of that? We were supposed to collect sap today for maple sugaring, but it snowed last night and is currently raining. (Todd calls this type of thinking mindless wandering. I prefer “stream of consciousness.”)

Anyway, if you feel as though your clothes are attacking you when you open a drawer, or if you have no idea if you have a purple shirt to go with those pink polka-dot shorts, try this. And don’t worry if your rolling is a bit ragged (like mine)– a little catawampus is a good thing!