Gold Star Day

I’ve come to realize that living in San Francisco is so much easier sartorially. San Francisco has one season—Fall. And maybe if lucky, ten days of summer sometime in October. When I lived in SF I never owned sandals, shorts, summer dresses or anything else remotely needed for hotter weather.

Though many love the four distinct seasons on the East Coast, it happens to be one of the things I hate about New York. Well, not really, but yeah, kind of…I hate the seasons for two reasons: 1) I have to change out the contents of everyone’s closets twice a year. We each have separate Fall/Winter and Spring/Summer wardrobes to squeeze into our tiny NYC closets, and 2) These seasons cost me money. It was so much easier just having to buy once for Fall. Of course I dreamed of sweet little dresses and strappy sandals, but why waste the money when you have nowhere to wear them, right?

Last night as I was getting ready for bed, it became distinctly clear to me that it’s that time of year again when I looked down at the ground and saw this:

It’s the perfect metaphor for my life right now. I have so much going on, and I’m so disorganized and cluttered, that none of it fits inside my brain or closet anymore.

It’s time to get organized. And I am dreading it.

I like the results after the job is done, but until it is, it will be like an episode of Hoarders, where I will have to negotiate, reason, and barter with myself, and at least once—yell and scream and have an emotional breakdown. And that’s before I even make it into my kids’ rooms.

I come from a pretty good gene pool of organizers, but personally, I’ve also perfected procrastination so getting started is going to be tough. For incentive I’ve decided to do exactly what I do with my kids when they finish a task off of their star chart, I reward them with a gold star. My star will be handed out at Sonia Rykiel, Dolce & Gabanna or over at Barney’s.