I was 15 the first time I realized the true power of rage cleaning. That day, I had returned from a tenth-grade field trip to find my locker partner making out with the boy I was crazy about against the locker we shared.
That night, I did not get on the phone to cry to friends. I did not flop onto my bed and do the whole woe-is-me sob fest?or maybe I did, but only for a few minutes before I noticed my closet door was open by an inch or two. From my bed, I could glimpse a jumble of shoes at the bottom. To a soundtrack of Indigo Girls and Counting Crows, I started with lining up the shoes and within minutes, I?d progressed to emptying my entire wardrobe on the floor of my bedroom. This was more than my usual neat-freak mode: I was now a wrecking ball of rage. For three full hours, I wiped down shelves, purged clothing, and folded everything into impossibly precise little squares. I colour-coded shirts, for God?s sake. At the end, my closet looked like a rack at the Gap, I had three bags of clothing to donate and I was exhausted. But at least I could sleep. There have been many, many other instances of rage cleaning since that first one.
My dorm room, when a friend handed in an essay I?d written the year before and we both got hauled into the dean?s office. My tiny bachelor apartment, many times, when my first boss turned out to be someone who subscribed to The Devil Wears Prada School of Management. The apartment I shared with my then-fiancé, when we got scammed by our weddi...