Necessity is the mother of invention. She’s also the mother of “I guess now you’ll deal with that situation you’ve been avoiding.” For me, this week, it’s the one-car side garage that we use as a storage unit/extension of my laundry room. I’ve avoided cleaning this area for forever. But someone ran into the garage door with a car (not me), and it’s not the first time it’s been run into (again not me), so now it’s finished. We must replace it. When the garage door repairman came, we went inside the garage, and I was embarrassed. He said everyone is always worried about the state of their garage. He was nice and said that it wasn’t that bad compared to some he’d seen. But he said that some things would need to be moved so they could do the install. And so, necessity required that I move things. Unfortunately, the time frame did not allow me to truly organize everything. So, my dining room is now a disaster, but they can replace the garage door. 

During the semi-cleaning process, I had to tamp down the urge to criticize myself for my procrastination and tendency toward clutter. One of the reasons I haven’t previously managed to solve this situation is because it can feel overwhelming. I also connect memories to a lot of the clothes the kids have worn in the past, making it harder for me to toss or donate things. It takes a lot of emotional energy to go through this process, not just physical energy. 

My commitment to this project started to wane, but then I found the laundry baskets that I hadn’t laid eyes on in a long time. There were FIVE of them, and they all contained socks. Individual socks. Single, “lost their partner” socks. I remember creating said baskets thinking I was being super organized and that I would return to the baskets repeatedly to find each person’s missing socks and magically unite all socks in our household together one day. Instead, the baskets were set aside, discarded, covered up, and I never once went back to them to search for errant socks. My good intentions never came to fruition.  

And so, this time, I threw all the socks away. I know I’m not the first to purge the sock basket(s), and more efficiently organized people would’ve thrown them away years ago instead of putting them in baskets. I’ve heard people talk about the freedom they feel when they get rid of the basket of single socks. And I felt some of that, but I ended up accepting the fact that it was just a first step, not a monumental triumph. Taking the first step is often the hardest part of any process. For me, beginning is often difficult because I want to know all the details of the process. I want to know how and when it will end. Unfortunately, that certainty I crave rarely occurs. Living with uncertainty is not easy for me, never has been, probably never will be. But avoiding the first steps because I’m afraid to tackle an unknown process is not a good way to live either. 

So, the next time I find myself stuck and unwilling to take the first steps necessary to start a project or process, I’ll try to remember the socks and the use the metaphor as an opportunity to kick off the next phase even though I don’t know the entire road I’ll walk, or maybe someday, even run.