"A Place for Everything and Everything in its place."

“A place for everything, and everything in its place.”
When I was a kid, I dreaded my mother uttering this sentence. At best, it meant put that thing away, don’t leave it where you have it now. At worst, it meant clean your room. 

When we lived in Philadelphia “the room” that would need cleaning was my playroom. I wasn’t allowed to keep any toys in my bedroom. We lived in a huge old Victorian that I loved and my mother hated. She hated it was too big, she couldn’t possibly keep it clean, you needed servants for a place that big and of course that was way beyond our means. The only reason we could live in that huge house, in that neighborhood, was that it was owned by the church where my dad was the pastor. My playroom was actually an “observatory,” that is, an indoor greenhouse linked to the main house. There were very wide windowsills that my mom filled with tropical plants when it got too cold for them outside. The entire interior of the room was where I played. Now that I think of it. there wasn’t much of any furniture I can recall. No wonder my stuff was always all over the floor. It was easy for my parents to ignore it, to close the door if company came over. Yo didn’t have to go through that room to go anywhere, it was in the back of the house. Why can’t I remember any furniture? There must have been some place to put my stuff away. 
My parents were amazed I always knew where everything was in that mess. When asked, I could find the kitchen scissors, or whatever I has swiped from them in an instant. But once every so often, they would “clean it up.” Half finished projects were rent asunder. What was organization to them was chaos to me. Thus the dread when my mom got to saying “A place for everything, and everything in its place.” too often. It was the harbinger of the dreaded room cleaning. 

Fast forward fifty something years, summer 2019. I go down to MICA for my summer grad school intensive, leaving behind my husband to do repairs on the house which is in full-on renovation mode. Lumber and or tools in every room in the house. Impossible to clean. Stuff everywhere. In my studio at MICA, I have only my own things. No chop saw or gallons of paint to step over. I started hanging up materials on the walls, the cords and yarn and rovings, in a color palette inspired system. A place for everything, and everything in its place started running though my head like a mantra. The meaning had totally flipped. Ordering things was a kind of thinking, and the order freed me to move forward with other things. I realized in that first week of the summer intensive, how much environment  could encourage-or discourage-my studio practice. My mother died in 1979, that her words came to me, helped guide me felt good, like I haven’t forgotten her.

My full-time job of the better part of 19 years ended officially yesterday, December 31, 2021. Today I begin a new life where I don’t have to get up at 5:30 every morning 5 days a week and come home exhausted and try to teach as an adjunct and do my art during that exhausted time when I wasn’t at work or getting ready to go to work or driving to and from work. 

A place for everything, and everything in its place no longer needs quotations because it’s now mine. I want to order my life around what I think is important. Sure, getting stuff organized, at least every so often is helpful. But those words are a lot more now. I want to organize my life purposefully, to put my time and resources where they are most important.