AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She nods.
I shrug and leave her vehicle. She pulls out, answering my question.
Michelle opens the door before I knock. “HEY!” She squeals. “I am so excited about this! I invited Cindy over to help me make decisions.”
“Okay, good. That will help you a lot.” I hug her neck. We enter the house and I hug Cindy who is anxiously waiting with a glass of wine in one hand.
“Want a drink?” Cindy offers.
“Yes, when we are done.” I tell her. I have to keep a clear head, or when Michelle starts falling apart, and they always do, over the things she needs to get rid of, I’ll give in too easily. “But thank you!”
Cindy smiles and sips the wine.
“Okay,” I rub my hands together. “Show me your cluttered space.” We all three walk to Michelle’s bedroom. “Oh, goodness. You do need me.”
I lift my phone and snap a picture for the “before” shot that will go in my portfolio. The girl loves shoes, I observe, and clothes, and purses. Her jewelry is in, and on, and around a lovely jewelry box which is overflowing. She has makeup laying from one end to the other across a good-sized vanity table with a lovely rectangle mirror that has scarves slung over the frame to where she can’t see herself when she sits in the chair. I sigh.
“Okay. Cindy, I’m going to give you a list of things we are going to need from the dollar store.” I say. I prefer Walmart, but the nearest one is in Spearfish and I don’t want to send her that far away. “Here’s two hundred dollars to buy what I tell you. Please bring me the receipt, I’ll need it. While you are gone, Michelle and I will start culling through all this wonderful stuff.”
I intentionally refer to Michelle’s stuff as wonderful because I can already see the anxiety building in her eyes.
“I can do that,” Cindy says happily as she sets the glass of wine down. I confirm she has only sipped about a fourth of the content. Assuming this is all she has had, she’ll be fine driving. “This is all that I have drank,” she reads my thoughts, “less than half a glass, so I’m good.”
“Good.” I state and pull out a notepad. I write down command hooks, zip lock bags, storage boxes, tape, five different colored Sharpie markers, plastic storage boxes, and some other things that I am sure we can utilize once we have sorted through her things. Cindy is off with the list.
“Now, I am going to lay three towels out on your bed. I want you to separate this jewelry onto the towels.” I gather the towels from her bathroom cabinet and lay them out. “This one is for family heirlooms, the second is for what you have worn in the last six months, the third is the stuff you never wear or is broken.”
Michelle sucks air between her teeth. “Okay,” she says hesitantly.
“I’ll help you.” I know how this will go. Jewelry is so hard to give up.
An hour, and many tears and stories about who or where she obtained the piece of jewelry later, we have all the jewelry sorted. “Now take the middle towel and put them back in this lovely jewelry box in an organized manner, of course.”
She does, while I gather the towel with the never worn and broken jewelry and put it out of sight in the spare bedroom, we had previously designated as a staging area. Cindy has returned with sacks and sacks of the items I had written down. I go through them and find the nice plastic storage box and gift-wrapping tissue paper. I bring it back into Michelle’s bedroom and begin wrapping the family heirlooms. Gently, I place them in the plastic storage box.
“Now, if an occasion comes up that you want to wear some of these heirloom pieces, you know where they are and can get to them.” I place the box next to the jewelry box for now. Once we have the closet organized. I’ll place it in a special spot on the shelf.
Michelle takes a deep breath. “I think I need some of that wine.”
We chuckle, and Cindy rushes from the room to bring Michelle a glass. I notice she brought herself a glass, too, only it’s fuller than the one she set down when she left to purchase the organizing supplies. Apparently she needs reinforcement from the wine, also.
“Now,” I lay out two towels on Michelle’s bed. “Let’s go through these clothes. I want you to take everything out of your closet one by one. Hold it up and decide: ‘Have I worn this in the past year?’ Yes, goes on this towel and No goes on that towel. We are just sorting right now, so don’t worry about whether you’re going to keep it or not. None of these lovely clothes are going anywhere yet.”
“Oh, you’re good.” Cindy mutters and refills the glasses of wine. I give her a little eyebrow lift but don’t say a word.
“It’s all a process.” I say. And keeping my client calm and not threatened is the key to success, I think to myself. I never reveal the reason for my process. It works better if the client doesn’t anticipate the get-rid-of part too soon. Cindy is perceptive and has caught on. Hopefully the subtle look I gave her will keep her from saying any more about the next steps.
With my reassurance that she wasn’t getting rid of any of her clothes, the tension melts from Michelle’s face, and she begins.
Just sorting between what she has worn and what’s been hanging longer than a year takes two hours. I’m not surprised. She has a lot of clothes, and she has been through some weight change in the last five years. So she has an assortment of sizes that she can no longer wear, but like most of us, she hopes to someday.
I glance at my watch. Reminding me that I have a men’s Rolex in my bedroom. Should I trade it for a lady’s Rolex? Would it give me the look of a successful business woman?
It’s eight o’clock. “Listen, let’s order pizza and take a break.” I suggest. Michelle and Cindy nod their approval. I bring up my pizza app and order online. In thirty minutes, the doorbell rings.
While Michelle is out of the bedroom to greet the pizza deliverer, I whisk the not-worn pile into the spare bedroom with the broken jewelry. I will give Cindy an assignment after we eat, and Michelle will go through the remaining “keep” pile next. We all move to the kitchen bar to eat.
Over pizza, we laugh and tell stories on ourselves. I keep it light when I talk about Jason and our horrible legal nightmare of a separation. The more I get to know these two, the more I really like them, and they seem to like me as well. I am convinced moving to Deadwood was the best decision I have ever made.
