Misguided Organization

One of my favorite words in the english language is "organized." I am always searching for new ways to get organized. My love of organization started early, but was a little misguided. Remember, I am not someone who was born organized, but I wish I was.

I am about to share a story that I'm sure will be passed down for generations to come in my family, as one of life's lessons. It's one that I'm not proud to share, but it illustrates the challenges with my desire to be organized.

When I was about 13, in an attempt to organize my dresser, I decided to sort my top drawer using paper bags. My underwear in one paper bag, labeled with a sharpie marker, my socks in another bag, labeled of course, and so on; with everything that might be in the top drawer of a teenaged girl's dresser.

One afternoon, my older sister walked into my bedroom, and like older sisters do, asked me with brutal honesty, "Melissa, why does your room smell so bad?" Apparently I had been in there so long that I couldn't smell it.

We searched for the source of the stench, and finally determined that it was coming from the top dresser drawer.

Who knows how many months prior, my mom had sent me upstairs to clean my room. There was a bunch of junk on the top of my dresser, and out of pure laziness, I opened my top drawer and dumped it in. Unbeknownst to me, one of the items that I swept into my top drawer was a sack lunch that I had apparently not eaten at school. If my memory serves me right, there was a ham sandwich on white bread (it wasn't white upon discovery) and a rock hard Little Debbie Oatmeal Sandwich (which I could not stomach many years later).

The theory is that since my top drawer was "organized" with brown paper bags, I didn't notice that there was an unmarked imposter lurking where it wasn't supposed to be.

The clothes that were in the entire dresser needed to be washed and the drawers themselved had to be aired out for days outside in order to free them of the smell, and I couldn't even sleep in my room that night because of the odor that had been unleashed. (I still can't figure out how a middle schooler could walk around school with clothes that most likely smelled rotten and not have at least one person comment.)

This, my friends, was my attempt at organization that completely backfired.

Moral of the story: Never organize your underwear drawer with paper bags.

Now you know. You're welcome.