Beyond the point of no return

For months, well okay maybe years, I have experienced this nagging feeling that one of my closets at home had taken over my life. 
I have a closet next to my home office that has become the dumping ground for everything that seems to come into my house. It measures small in size at only about 4 feet by 5 feet, but what it lacks in overall size, it more than makes up for with its ability to hold large quantities of “stuff.”
I dreaded peaking into the closet on a daily basis, especially when I sit only a few feet away from it and am  constantly reminded of it. I was convinced this particular closet was beyond the point of no return. It became even worse when some of the shelving in the closet gave way to the weight of everything I was trying to jam inside. One by one, four in total, shelves crumbled on top of each other, creating an even greater mess for me to handle.
With the new year upon us and a little time to kill this past weekend, I decided to take a stab at bringing some order to this chaotic closet. With the help of my youngest daughter, we peeled out layer after layer of materials. It took several hours, but we finally got to the bottom of it.
I found a few surprises in the closet. I stuffed away some chunks of fudge I bought on a vacation a few years back. Of course, the fudge was rock hard and beyond the point of eating. I also discovered a few gifts that I had purchased that never made their way into the hands of those they were intended for. At least there wasn’t anything dead in there, though there was evidence of a critter rummaging through my keepsakes.
The biggest problem I found was with the newspapers stored in the closet. Each week I file away the newspaper so that I have them for easy reference if I need to go back on anything. Well, with about 10 years of papers stacked on top of each other, you now have a clue why the shelving decided it had had enough. The recycling can quickly became overwhelmed, and I found a new spot to store most of my papers. I decided that perhaps it was best to only keep a couple years of back issues instead of a decade’s worth.
It always amazes me how quickly we get ourselves absorbed in the routine of daily life and how things can get out of control in no time. That’s what happened to me with this particular closet. And I’m sure I can find some other rooms in the house where I’ll likely find the same dilemma.
The new year is always a good time to get on top of things. I encourage you to take some time to purge and reorganize.
I am finding there really isn’t anything better to do than going in hot pursuit of cleaning on the COVID days we’re all facing as we are held hostage in our homes under quarantine.