2021 Space Mission: A Tale of Obsession and Home Organisation

Standing on the back patio, I gaze up into the night sky. I’m looking for my favourite constellation, Cassiopeia, mother of Andromeda, and a few others I know. I always look for Orion too, to whom I give a customary salute — a nod to an old joke with a brilliant friend, though I can’t for the life of me remember why we do that.

I should feel synchronously expansive and tiny, my problems insignificant — how one should feel when staring into the vastness that is the universe. I think about far flung galaxies, and our very own Milky Way, with its 3,000 light year splinter — how it might be coming apart at the seams. I relate.

Rather than feeling spacious though, I feel angry, irritable and tightly wound. I can’t even see the moon, mostly because it’s off somewhere waning, but also partly because our landlord has a system of 5000-Lumen security lights rigged up around the property, illuminating us to the high heavens. We might actually be visible from space.

Vexed, I turn and step back inside the living room. But in here, for once, I find peace. For the first time in my life, my house is a haven.

As it turns out, a waning moon is a highly auspicious time for decluttering. So here is a story of how my escalating obsession with home organisation collided with a new goal…