Not long ago, I purged my bedroom closet. I’d ignored it for many months. Purging is one of those tasks that falls under the “someday” category: “I really should, but not today,” “I’ll get around to it,” “It’s not really interfering with my life, so why bother?”

But I had a couple of promising job interviews coming up and, rather than go shopping on my non-budget, I figured I’d troll for prospects at home. Purging requires music, of course, so, aptly, I cranked the Spring Awakening cast album and set to work.

My categories were: Keep Here, Switch Closets, Throw Away, and Goodwill.

Keep Here included anything that still fits and that I would actually wear. That would thin out the bulging rack. I even organized the results: sweaters, tops, jackets, blouses, skirts, pants. Wow. I sure do have a lot of black clothes. And I’m not even a Wiccan or anything. I guess it’s that “black is slimming” thing. At least I found a good interview outfit I wouldn’t have thought of, which was the whole point of this purge anyway.

Switch Closets included summer clothes, clothes I hope to fit back into “someday,” and clothes with sentimental value that were hogging space, like the oversized cuddly flannel shirt that my boyfriend from 1992 gave me, which I still love, the shirt not him, but haven’t worn in years.

Throw Away yielded some shocking entries, including a pair of black pumps with cracked soles and crumpled heels—what was I thinking?—and a stained pair of white summer sandals that would take three bottles of shoe polish to restore to wearability. Toss. And a little black skirt with a broken zipper that I apparently thought was worth keeping just in case I lost half of my body weight someday and could afford a seamstress. Buh-bye.

I filled the Goodwill bag with belts from the 1980s that wouldn’t even get around Barbie’s waist, brand-new full-size sheets that don’t fit my queen-size bed, four winter scarves with unsightly pilling, and another little black skirt whose zipper works just fine but will never, ever happen no matter how hard I try. Let someone else enjoy it.

Maybe when I get a new job I’ll get myself a new little black skirt, one that I can enjoy right now, instead of waiting for someday.

Some somedays have turned into nevers. Tucked way back on the rack, almost forgotten, I found an adorable blue-and-white cotton-and-denim onesie that I bought for a friend’s baby over 20 years ago. It was carefully covered in plastic, dangling from its cute little baby hanger. I loved the outfit so much, I ended up getting my friend a different gift and kept this one, waiting, hoping for the day when I’d have my own child.

What category did it belong in? It couldn’t be Throw Away. Not Goodwill. Maybe Switch Closets. But the baby outfit is a part of who I am, a connection to something that might have been but never was. Although I won’t have a biological child, I can create and give and love in other ways—through my writing, through my relationships, through my clinical work, through being a kitty mama. No. I decided on Keep Here.

Done. Purged. Brand-new closet. Brand-new week. Looking ahead to a new season, with new projects and new challenges.

Now what about those 9,067 emails in my inbox? Maybe someday.