Spring

"A place for everything - "

" - and everything in it's place. I know." My mom and I are standing in my bedroom, assessing the situation, discussing the new leaf I'm turning over. It's going to be a tidy leaf. And not just tidy, but clean. I figure I might as well turn it all the way, this leaf.

"Your room is the dustbin of the western world," she'd said with great amusement, a few days earlier, in my cleared-out bedroom at the old apartment. True. I hadn't dusted once in four years and the bunnies were raging out of control. If it had been anyone's mess but mine, I'd have been disgusted. I'd always been one of those people for whom messes were personal extensions, like Pigpen from Peanuts. They were where I was. Without threat of outsiders coming around to crinkle their noses and swat at the air, cleaning and tidying just never occurred to me as possible uses of my time.

Four years of that, and I find myself an amateur trash collector. It snuck up on me.

But I won't let that happen again - I have a new rule. It was inspired by the pulse of glee I felt each time I schlepped a heavy trash bag to the dumpster. (Whee! My house is losing weight!) The rule is: one thing in, one thing out.

"Oh, yeah, good luck," my mom says when I lay down my rule. "Just don't be like your father, and throw things out before you notice what they are."

"No, I'm not talking about an all-out dumping spree," I say. "It'll be more of a thoughtful exchange. Like, I buy a new book, I give away an old shirt."

"God, you'll be naked in weeks."

I explain about balance - how this is a new buzzword in my life, how I'm going to use the Scale of Stuff to determine the Quotient of Need minus the Weight of Want, or some loopy babble like that. The point is that I will have to move again someday. When that happens, I don't want to uncover archaeological detritus suggesting that, of all the personalities warring for my head, Pigpen is winning.

"Well, this place certainly has a lot of potential," says Mom. "I hope you do keep it neat." She pauses, considering the walls. "You know, I think this shade of green came out better than we expected."

"Yeah, me too," I say. "It's light, but not pale."

"And bright, but not neon."

"Kind of a spring-y green."

"That was the idea."