May 2026

It is Spring everywhere you look and everywhere you smell, especially if you have allergies like I do. I take round-the-clock antihistamines to keep it manageable, but there are mighty pollens that somehow get around/through and make my face a mess. It would probably help if I would stop smashing my nose inside petals to get a whiff. (But here is where I insert the shrug emoji, because I can’t agree to that.)

The beauty of this season takes my breath away (sometimes literally!). Cherry trees so heavy laden with blossoms that the boughs are hanging low to the ground! Bright tulips and crocus popping everywhere! Ranunculus finally showing up in the grocery store! (Nuncs (Ranunculus asiaticus) are in my top five fav flowers. Fyi, they are also bisexual.) Bees and hummies starting to get busy! And the greens, just so many lovely shades of green, everywhere you look in the Pacific Northwest! (This is where I insert the yellow smiling heart eyes emoji.) Spring gets a lot of exclamation points!!

The Purge

For the last few years, I’ve wanted to clean out and organize every corner of the apartment. It’s tough to stay organized and tidy in an apartment unless you decide to simply not own any things. We are not those people. We are three adult humans, two of whom have a penchant for collections and one of whom does not like more than one of any given thing at any time. (When I tell you that Brandelyn has had to have the patience of a saint while I’ve overcome (cough mostly cough) my Mormon year supply mentality, ya’ll, I mean…*) Claren has about 500 books and 13 frillion stuffed guys from all the movies she’s ever seen. I have about half that many books and about twice that many items disbursed between all my collections of things including cool boxes, fabric, pens, rocks, paper, and crystals. 

There is not enough space in our entire apartment complex for how many “cool” boxes and pine cones I would save if space was no problem. (Sometimes I like to think of the entire outside world as my space and I just leave the leaves and sticks and shells where I found them for safe keeping.) 

These collections of items I create are in direct opposition to my need for order and simplicity in my living spaces. I want to know exactly what items are in my home and I like to know that all those items are exactly where they belong. That gets hard when you run out of places to stack your smooth river rocks and the seventeen tiny acorn hats your grandson ceremoniously handed you last fall that don't fit, well, anywhere. (This is where I insert the upside-down face emoji.)

Energy

A couple of weeks ago, I got back on a GLP-1. I trialed one last summer/fall and it went great, but fighting to get my insurance to cover it over the course of about 18 months, even with recommendations from four different specialists on my medical team, was exhausting and ultimately failed. 

While I was on it for those three months, though, the effects I experienced in my body were extraordinary and unexpected. My thyroid suddenly worked better after being on the same dose of Levothyroxine for the last 25 years so my dose was decreased. I had much less morning body pain because there was less swelling in my joints and limbs happening during the night. My ibuprofen use dropped to virtually nothing. Even with (maybe because of?) the slower digestion rate, I was getting higher nutrition extraction from my food and I had more energy. My mood was elevated and the nighttime fog of sadness that descends around 8pm every night disappeared. My joints hurt less and I could do more in a day. Generally speaking, my body had much less chronic inflammation, I got to do more things, and I just felt better. 

It was devastating to have to quit taking it last fall and feel all those symptoms come back. Luckily, we were able to find a way to afford it now with less expensive options opening up for those of us who have to self-pay. 

But all that to say - a month back on it and I have increased energy coming returning and it’s wonderful. And that energy is what I needed to purge and organize an apartment. (insert the flexed bicep emoji here) I’ve been walking around like your dad on a Saturday, carrying a measuring tape and a screwdriver in my pocket, just in case they come in handy. (You’d be surprised how often I need to measure things!) I put up new shelving and every drawer has been organized within an inch of its life.

What’s with all the emoji talk, Leoh? 

Some nights will find me folding clothes in front of the TV for an hour while Brandelyn cross stitches on the other end of the couch. (Folding clothes is another organizing and tidying activity and it’s deeply satisfying. Putting the stacks away is sometimes another story...) We’ve been slowly watching the latest season of The Circle. If you haven’t seen it, the contestants are in isolation from life and from each other, and have only themselves and the computer screens to talk to the entire time they film, which is about three weeks. They must read aloud all the messages they send and receive, including the full name of the emojis, which is now something I like to do in regular life. It also seems to be a rule that they include at least one hashtag in every message. #seemssuperextrabutok   

I am not recommending you watch it except maybe season 1, which was a really cool social experiment. Later seasons have become pretty formulaic. #watchshrinkingonappletvinstead

^{Working with Leoh has been transformative, during one of the most challenging (but rewarding) years of my life. ~R.W.}

Math

My brain loves geometry and I can “see” inside my head how to organize spaces in an efficient way. It’s like a puzzle or Tetris where the pieces just fit and lock in together. My brain can asses an object or piece of clothing and figure out how to build/remake it. I can also do that with processes, like cooking dinner or getting ready for an event. I can tell what needs to be done and in what order to have the best flow. I will literally dream about specific cleaning and cooking most nights before we host something.

I don’t have a ton of great memories from my childhood, but one I do have is being about eleven and getting permission to organize the utensil drawers in the kitchen. My childhood home was built by my dad (from a house plan drawn by my grandma!) and the custom kitchen utensil drawers were about 36” wide and 4” deep, kind of like paper drawers at the (old-timey) printers. I cut cardboard boxes (from the year supply room that held things like 5,000 1970s edition Modess pantyliners (they were easily 1” thick), complete with snap belts to hold in place!) into long strips that I taped inside the drawers to create sections for ladles, spatulas, knives, and nut crackers etc. (We had a lot of dull knives and nut crackers!) I remember looking at the tidied drawers and being so satisfied. Just, extremely pleased in a way that felt new and unique. That is the first time I can recall getting a brain boost in a neurosparkly way. My mom was mystified that that was what I wanted to spend my time doing, but I got so much enjoyment from it and it sparked what became a life-long love of organizing. 

This is not to say I was always living in a pristine room growing up. Inside the cupboard, I had boxes and trays full of organized collections, but I also had my ever-haystacked pile of clothes on a chair that I never put away. I can’t count the number of times I went through my mom’s button jar or the family’s shoe boxes full of pens, pencils, crayons, and shoelaces. I wanted to see (feel? experience?) a graduated line of colored pencils by length and then by color, or a perfect square made of partly used, rectangle pink erasers of different sizes. (Thread, running shoe, pencil, crayon, and package emojis) 

But nothing feels as good as checking off a long list of to-dos with green checkmarks in my notes app. I have a running to-do list pretty much all the time, but I also have event to-do lists for when something big is going to happen, like hosting a dinner or having a game night. My notes app has several hundred of them at this point and they all make me very happy and satisfied to occasionally review as I copy/paste a previous event’s completed list into a fresh, new note for something upcoming, quickly deleting each green check mark until I earn it back. 

When I put my cleaning and list making through the ADHD filter, it’s easy to see how I use an upcoming event as a starter pistol to pull me through getting something done that would be easy to procrastinate. I tell myself that I’ve come up with a smart algorithm for working with my neurospiciness, and I think that’s mostly true. It does seem like, most of the time, there has to be a perfect set of conditions for me to get the right motivation to do something big like clean out all the closets, even when there have been bags smashed in the back, which I hate, full of who knows what, for months/years. (Which is why my preference is to keep everything in it’s place, all the time.)

My need for schedules and routines can sometimes make taking on a big project challenging, too, when I’m mid-cleaning something out and have to stop for dinner, but somehow, even with all that, after mixing all my inherent magical traits together, out sprinkles a mostly functional adult who can get shit done. 

^{Leoh is helping me hold my business in check so I’m getting more done in a day than I often do in a week. The accountability and structure that Leoh and I have developed around my unique challenges has been such a game changer. I no longer feel alone in my business. ~K.C.}  

Purging other ways

All the physical purging and straightening makes way for an internal spring cleaning. As I methodically lay out everything from one of the bathroom drawers (to find twelve identical lip balms and an unknown number of hair ponies) I think and consider what is cluttered inside me that needs to go. (face with monocle emoji)

Maybe I could start with the collection of ways I wish I wasn’t me? Wherever I land on the spectrum highlights the many opportunities in a day I wish I could be, feel, and act differently, especially under stress. I’ve spent my life masking for safety, and I don’t actually need to most of the time anymore. What if I was more myself, unfiltered? What if I admitted when I felt uncomfortable instead of defaulting into the fawning smile?

I get to work with people all day who are unique in their own ways and I don’t ever wish they were different. Instead, we celebrate who they are. It would be lovely to offer more of that to myself. 

Or maybe it’s time to throw out the box that’s full of ways I tend to hurt my own feelings around stalled and broken family relationships when there is no solution. It’s gutting and there are entire afternoons or evenings lost to swimming in that murky grief lake. I can’t fix it, I haven’t been able to move on, I’ve felt stuck. I would love to reclaim some of that time for things that bring me joy. I haven’t found a place to lay down my heartache yet, but I can fathom beginning to look.  

Flow

After things are organized, my creative flow finds me. After purging and organizing the paint tubes and brushes in my studio, I can suddenly paint after a long drought. Flashes and shapes and colors come into my mind. I forgot how good it feels. I forgot how much I need it. I forgot how much I use it to process my feelings. 

Order and tidiness aren’t important just because it’s then easier to find things, but that is part of it. And it’s not just because it’s cleaner, although that is also part of it. And it’s not even being able to add all those green check marks, even though I will be completely upfront with you that that is one of my favorite activities.

It’s mostly because my brain gets jammed when the space around me is jammed with piles of stuff. I can’t think very well. I don’t remember to figure out how I feel about things happening in my life. And that means I can’t show up for myself as easily, in pretty much any way.

When my spaces are tidy and organized and I know where everything is, I can feel the creative gears turning again and my ability to self-regulate comes back online. It feels great to be back in the flow.

Spring is blooming. I’m blooming. I hope you have a chance to bloom this spring, too. (smiling cat with heart eyes emoji)

***We’ve both actually made compromises in this area. She now is more comfortable with an extra deodorant waiting in the wings and I’m more comfortable with only 16 cans of beans in the pantry instead of 50.**

**The “pantry” is actually 16 rubbermaid containers under the Command Center since this apartment doesn’t have a pantry. Only one of the labels has lettering that is centered and yes, it bothers me and yes, I will probably redo them (again).

***The Command Center is the name I gave this giant rolling piece of furniture we bought several years ago, because I imagined it would be where mail, bills, and filing**** would occur, as well as house pens, pencils, scissors, and tape in it’s drawers. It does in fact hold writing utensils, but it’s mostly a pantry carport and serving dishes sidebar.

****It’s cute that I thought I would keep up so regularly on filing.

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