So Sunday, I cleaned the bedroom closet.

Actually, this underrates it considerably. Closets I have tackled before have merely been the warm-up. This was a walk-in closet, or rather a wade-in closet, in that it was hip deep in…stuff.

Some of it was my stuff. I freely admit it. The closet, not cleaned since before Kevin got divorced, had become the "huck it in there" space, all clothing living in drawers and wardrobes elsewhere in the bedroom. But under that layer of strata which I contributed to, compressed into diamond-like hardness, was several years of clutter, office supplies, camping equipment, several years worth of Shonen Jump, bags of old electrical bills, the minutes and handbooks for a Boy Scout troop from the days when Kevin was a troop leader,* a handful of offerings from the Disney Movie Club, elderly snow globes, and the residue from his ex-wife’s brief home business brokering the sales of anime memorabilia.*

This was an Ur-closet.

We had made plans to clear out this closet. They involved multiple weekends and were spoken of as some people might talk about taking a cruise around the world. It was clear that tackling this particular Sacrifice Zone would require a great deal of time and planning.

Well. If I have learned anything in this life–and sometimes I’m not sure I have–it’s that PMS-fueled psychosis trumps time and planning any day. Sometime Sunday morning, I decided that what I really wanted in life was a reading chair, and that needed to be placed in my studio, and that meant that the stuff currently in the way (a rack filled with matboard, illustration board, etc) into the closet, which meant moving my clothes out of the closet, which meant cleaning the closet in the bedroom, which meant that I spent about six hours with garbage bags and my own hormone-driven madness.

Kevin walked in after a few rounds of "Junk or Treasure?" ("Can I throw away this strategy guide for Diablo I? How ’bout the broken stapler?") and professed amazement. Then he professed fear and ran away. This was a logical and intelligent response to the situation. I had become Death, Destroyer of Clutter.

I have seen things, man. Things that cannot be unseen.

But the closet is clear. It took about five contractor bags and a couple of storage bins. I moved my clothes in. Were I the beagle, I might have peed in the corner to claim territory–being slightly more civilized, I put some books on the built-in bookcase and hung my corsets.

Tomorrow, cleaning out the studio closet. This promises to take less time, but offer more in the way of broken glass.

*Kevin is an intriguing combination of upstanding pillar of his community and deranged lunatic of the sort that hangs out with me.

**More Dragonball Z figurines than you can shake a stick at ..