My whole life, I have had an unhealthy obsession with tiny little boxes. You can put stuff in them, and then your stuff is, like, INSIDE the box, and some anal-retentive part of me finds the whole concept endlessly fascinating.

I have so many tiny little boxes. Felt-lined jewelry gift boxes. Cardboard jewelry boxes. Metal cigarette tins. I even have several cardboard match boxes that play an important role in my grand organization scheme. Don't even get me started on the Altoids tins. I had to stop buying Altoids eventually. I had half a dozen identical little metal boxes and I was running of stuff to put in them and it was stressing me out.

The reason I bring all of this up is that for Christmas, Rijid got me the best, and worst possible gift ever. (This isn't The gift, that I was so worried about. That turned out to be a Dr. Zoidberg T-shirt. He had to special order it, because for reasons beyond my comprehension, there simply is no Dr. Zoidberg merchandise readily available. I ask you, HOW can this be? We claim to be a civilized and rational society, but without plentiful images of Dr. Zoidberg, civilization is revealed as nothing but a shallow mockery. But I digress.)

Rijid got me another jewelry box. It's amazing. It looks like a little wardrobe. It has two long cabinets for hanging necklaces, and four adorable little drawers. I hated him for giving it to me, because it meant I would have to go through ALL of my jewelry, and reorganize. FOUR adorable little drawers! I had to find FOUR completely new kinds of jewlery that weren't already cleverly and meticulously put in a tiny little box somewhere.

That was what I was thinking when I opened the gift. Last night, I finally started this project, and quickly realized that I was thinking about this all wrong. In fact, what I actually need is more little boxes. A LOT more.

Numerous little boxes were indeed freed up. Most of my necklaces are hanging on little hooks now, instead of in assorted little boxes, or in scary tangled knots in slightly larger little boxes. But, every single box that got emptied was almost instantly filled with something else. I have a box of loose buttons. I have a box of paper clips, and a box of dice. Dude. I have a box of random keys. I have no idea what any of these keys do. A sane person would just throw them out. But then I'd have an empty box, and that's just not cool. So they're in a little box now, and it's all good.

I spent almost three hours last night, turning into every crazy old lady in the world. I knew that I had left sanity in the dust a long time ago, but I just couldn't stop.

The worst part is, I'm not done. I see now how much I desperately needed another jewelry box. My necklaces are all nicely sorted. But the earrings are totally out of control.

I deliberately didn't even look at the earring box while I was organizing. My earring box was a gift my Grandpa made for me 20-something years ago. I knew that no matter how much I love Rijid, I couldn't let his gift replace Grandpa's. So, I concentrated on all the rest of my jewelry instead.

Compared to the new necklace box, the earring box is complete chaos. Just thinking about organizing it makes my brain hurt. I probably won't have another anal-retentive fit like this for years.

previous--next