Organization: My Own Form of Heroin

I love to be organized. I love the process of organization. I love finding containers to organize things into.

A little OCD?

Probably. Nobody's perfect though, right?

Anyway, that's why the storage room in our house has bothered me for the entire 2 1/2 years that we have lived here. The room is big, which is great, but that's all there was-just a large open room with not a shelf in sight. When we moved in, we piled boxes up against the walls. My first months in this house were not restful ones that I could spend leisurely sorting through boxes and organizing this cave which seemed to attract spare bits of flotsam from all over the house. I was newly pregnant with Sam, and had a 4 month old Charlie to deal with at the same time. Needless to say, I didn't get around to organizing much of anything in there anytime soon.

Things got worse after Sam was born. Not only was I half crazed between taking care of two infants, but I started to need things that were buried in boxes down there. I would hurriedly paw through boxes and shove things around to find something quickly in the rare 5 minutes I would have to myself, desperately searching for a piece of baby equipment I knew was down there SOMEWHERE. The mess grew and grew.

Eventually things calmed down a bit in our lives. As they did, I stopped to notice how horrifying it had become in the storage room. Admittedly, not as horrifying if you are Jeff or someone else without a need for order, but to me it was horrifying. I hated walking past the door or going in to find something.

So, I started talking about getting some shelving units. My dad, who is a master at building things thought that was dumb. He said he could custom build me some floor to ceiling shelving units that would better utilize the space.

My rock star Dad took the day off from work on Tuesday, came to my house to work instead, and built me this:



They extend along two walls and I am just in love with them. I happily organized away last night, and I just feel SO. MUCH. BETTER. Isn't my dad great?



This is a part of what I am thankful for this Thanksgiving. Not just my new shelves, gorgeous as they are, but for a wonderful Dad who loves me. Loves me enough to keep taking care of me with kind acts even though I am a grown up. It is a wonderful thing to feel cherished and loved by a parent, and to know that will be true no matter how old you are.