Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony – Thomas Merton

The quest for order continues. After the compulsory cup of morning coffee, it was time to tackle the remaining zones of chaos in my apartment.

The kitchen and bathroom already had their turn; today it was the closet, bedroom and living room.

You have to be slightly ruthless to tackle a closet, make no mistake about that. If you’re tired of standing in front of a rack of clothing every morning with the sentence ‘I have nothing to wear.’ on your lips, then trust me, it’s time. You need to man up and get in there!

After countless mornings of staring at a pile of clothes and hating all of them, I decided to pull out everything that I don’t wear on a regular basis. By regular I mean at least once in a 2 week period at a push.

Everything that’s a tad snug or doesn’t fit quite right, it needs to be moved out of the way. I’m not talking about tossing it, I mean move it out of the way. Half my closet ended up on my bed this morning. The shirts missing a button that I can’t be arsed to sew back on; the tops that pull a bit over the boobage; the skirts that make me feel poofy; the pants that pinch in the wrong places. All of it. On the bed. In a pile.

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All that remained were things that I feel comfortable in; things that accentuate the bits that look good; jewelry that I wear on a consistent basis; shoes that are comfortable.

I have a small storage room outside my apartment where I store stuff like luggage and things. The stockpile of clothing went into a suitcase. There were a few items I’ll never wear again and they went into a separate pile to go to Goodwill. Don’t feel that you need to keep what doesn’t suit you. People change. Your moods change. What worked once doesn’t have to work for eternity. Allow yourself to move on from your previous fashion choices even if they were expensive at the time.

Once that was done it was time to hit the pile of magazines neatly stacked on the shelves. I went through a phase where I subscribed to everything; food, wine, travel, you name it.

If I haven’t found time to look through the stockpile of recipe books I own, what makes me think I’ll magically make time to page through the 36 magazines on the shelf? They have to go.

The decision to move has been made, although the final decision lies with a random stranger in a visa office somewhere. In the meantime it doesn’t hurt to prepare for the eventuality of it. Will I ship this stuff across the Atlantic? No. Well then, there’s the answer.

When the kitchen fell victim to my cleaning spree last week I found a pile of stuff that is barely used. They went into a box this morning. A full box of kitchen stuff packed away, leaving me some much needed space to work with.

The art supplies that have been on the counter tops have found a home on the closet shelf where all the excess clothing used to live. Seriously, 16 white pillow cases. SIXTEEN! WHY?

There’s nothing a decent cup of coffee, an iron will and a few battle anthems off YouTube can’t fix. Find a playlist compilation you can live with, put the kettle on and tackle the chaos head on. The shift in energy is palpable when order is restored.

Order is one of the ingredients for happiness according to Thomas Merton. The man made a lot of sense.

Here’s Saturday’s installment of the Rose Street saga:

Saturday on Rose Street, Edinburgh
Saturday on Rose Street, Edinburgh

The fridge is stockpiled with the ingredients of another Scottish meal so that’s the plan for tomorrow.

It also turns out the secret Cornish pasty recipe that I thought was buried with my Nana is actually stored in my mom’s head. She passed on the magic over Skype this afternoon and tomorrow I’m going to try it out. With a bit of motherly advice and some divine intervention from beyond, I reckon I have this under control.

 

Author: MacScottie

I'm a South African-born American who dabbles in writing, photography and cookery. I lived in England for 6 years before moving to America. My first trip to Scotland was in 2003 and it was love at first sight. 4 trips later & I'm now on a quest to find a way back to my soul-home in Scotland. I've picked up favourite foods in each place I've lived so I'm a product of all the places I've been. A sprinkling of this, a dash of that and in an emergency, a generous splash of Scotch!

12 thoughts on “Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony – Thomas Merton”

  1. Wow! Thanks for the comment, much appreciated. I haven’t quite figured out how to do the subscription hyperlink, I’m still figuring my way around it. Spam is sometimes an issue, but it’s mostly stuff like how to monetize a blog, which isn’t really my thing. I find ads annoying on other blogs so I’m not going to subject anyone to that! I write for fun, not ad revenue. Way easier keeping it simple. I’ll definitely be doing more pieces about simplifying life in the next few months when I hopefully get to pack up and relocate to Scotland:-) Thanks for popping by and hope to see you online again soon.

  2. Thank you Donnie, much appreciated. It’s always good to know someone is finding the content useful. Have a great weekend!

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