Colored pencils lay splayed across the floor like Pick-Up Sticks next to an unopened box of watercolor crayons, under rows of open, empty wooden drawers. I was at the worst part of the reorganizing process – the point when one wonders what they had been thinking when they took on such a project. Chaotic piles of art supplies wrapped around me as I considered various groupings for the eleven drawers the cabinet held. Paintbrushes go with watercolor tubes. No, paintbrushes should stay with other tools like palette knives and ink pens. But it makes more sense to keep pens with pencils and other long, skinny items. Overwhelmed with decision fatigue and a strong desire to walk away from the mess, God gave me an idea: what if I rearrange instead of reorganize? Instead of tucking away like items back in the drawers that “made sense,” I could set my paint tubes, watercolor crayons, brushes and jars of ink out in the open. Suddenly, the project felt like an exciting experiment instead of a test of my organizational skills, and soon colorful supplies paraded across the top of the cabinet of drawers. While it wasn’t the neat and tidy outcome that I had imagined, I felt refreshed and ready to try something new. 

When I opened my sketchbook the next morning, an indigo oil pastel that I had forgotten about caught my eye. It made delightful shapes on the page. Fluorescent pink ink, purchased with hope and then promptly tucked away in a drawer to be forgotten, called to be dripped on top of the oil pastel. Something new was happening in my art, I could see it and feel it. All because of an experiment with rearranging. 

Rearranging things from the inside to the outside can be a scary process. We worry about creating messes. We wonder how others will respond. There is something comforting, and even convincing, about keeping our stuff tucked away in thoughtfully organized drawers. 

It didn’t take long for my jars of paintbrushes, lines of ink bottles and piles of oil pastels to feel more like an invitation than an experiment. They wait, with an eager patience, for me to come and hold them tenderly, to use them to make new marks in the world. I cannot make the art I used to make, because there are so many more tools available to me now. In their new homes, they refuse to be forgotten or overlooked. And with each day that passes, it becomes harder to remember how I made anything with “organized” supplies.