Today: Restore order (at a store)

If I wasn’t in love with our condo (and if I hadn’t vowed to never move again… until we move again), then I would seriously consider taking up permanent residence at the Container Store.

From their punny shopping bags (Contain yourself! …get it?) to their storage solutions to problems I didn’t even know I had, it’s Nirvana for control freaks with questionable senses of humor.

Speaking of Nirvana,  late last week my intern accidentally snapped the head off the Buddha my brother brought back from Thailand.  For over a year, that little guy had been overseeing the karmic flow of my office, making knowing eye contact with me every once in a while to remind me to stop swearing and start recycling, and now…

…he rests in pieces.

I am not really sure how it happened, but at some point, he unceremoniously hit my glass desktop, and his holy head went shooting into my lap.  My poor intern looked like she might croak.  I thought about asking her to go to Thailand to find me a replacement (immediately, obviously), but I am more Michael Scott than Miranda Priestly.  Instead, I wadded up a piece of double stick tape, mushed the head back on, and went about my business.  And by business, I mean posting the above picture to Facebook.

Needless to say, this quasi-traumatic incident left me craving balance and order, and there is no earthly place more rife with both than the Container Store.  Nick and I made a pilgrimage to their Natick store (after spending hours and dollars at Jordan’s Furniture. Side note: apparently any color that is not beige is considered a “custom” color.   Please stay tuned for 6 weeks for our living room transformation!  Wooo!) this weekend.  Man, we know how to live.

One giant cartload and several hours of sweat and elbow grease (ew) later, we now have two of the world’s most organized closets.  Once I find my label maker (I might be the only person Type A enough to have a label maker… and yet, Type B enough that it is missing), I can kick it up one more notch.  Bam!

A place for everything and everything in its place.

–Isabella Mary Beeton, The Book of Household Management (1861)

Now I just need to find a place for Buddha’s head.

Also On Tap for Today:

• Seriously consider making one of these, and then seriously consider whether or not this is out of my reach.
• Dream up some really great birthday presents for my sister and Nick, both born on the 7th of October… sassy Libras!
• Eagerly await our first Peapod delivery; I will report back on cost vs. convenience.

How do you restore balance?  How do you react when another human breaks one of your toys, with grace and poise?  Or glares and profanity?  Any good ideas for the man and the sister’s birthdays?