The Drawer I Open Before Virgo Season

Written on the seventeenth of August, six days before the Sun leaves Leo.

There is a drawer in my bedroom in Pererenan that I open once a year, always around this week. It is the bottom drawer, the deep one, the one that holds the things I did not know where else to put. A silk slip I have not worn in three years. A hair oil I bought in Ubud because the bottle was beautiful. Two combs. A linen top with a seam I keep meaning to mend. I open it in the last days of Leo, and I sit on the floor with it, and I do not throw anything away.

"Before you tidy anything, name it. Most of what we call clutter is only something we have not been honest about yet."

This is the practice I want to give you today, because the timing is unusually good and because it costs nothing. The Sun moves into Virgo on the twenty third of August. Between now and then there are six days, and they are the quietest six days of the month. The eclipse has passed. The moon is a thin waxing crescent, about a quarter lit tonight, sitting in Libra. It reaches first quarter on the twentieth. Nothing is asking to be launched yet. Everything is asking to be looked at.

Why the days before a season matter more than the season

Virgo arrives with the urge to fix. Most of us meet that urge by discarding, and we discard fast, and then in November we quietly rebuy the same three things. I have done this more times than I want to admit. What I learned is that the sorting is not the work. The naming is the work, and it has to happen before the urge to fix arrives, or the urge will do the naming for you and it will be unkind about it.

So I use these six days. Not to clean. To look.

What I actually do with the drawer

I take everything out and put it on the bed. Then I make three piles, and here is the part that matters, because the piles are not keep, donate, bin. They are: what I reach for, what I keep for the woman I used to be, and what I keep for the woman I am becoming.

The first pile is honest and usually small. The second pile is tender and usually large, and I do not touch it. It is allowed to exist. The third pile is the interesting one, because it tells you what you actually believe about your own future, and it is often full of things that were bought as a promise rather than a garment.

Then I put it all back. All of it. The only thing that has changed is that I now know which pile each thing lives in, and that knowledge does the work over the following weeks without any effort from me. By September I have usually let go of two or three things without a single dramatic decision.

The same question, applied to your hair

Do this with your bathroom shelf and it will save you money by the end of the year. Take everything down. Which bottle do you actually reach for on a Tuesday morning when you are late? That is your real routine. Everything else is aspiration, and aspiration on a bathroom shelf tends to go rancid.

Most women I know are using four or five products where two would serve them better. A waxing moon week like this one is a good moment to simplify, because hair responds to consistency far more than it responds to variety. One oil for the scalp, one thing for the lengths, and a comb you like the feel of. That is a routine you will still be doing in March. A shelf of eleven bottles is a routine you will abandon by the second week of September.

Why naming beats discarding

Virgo is not the sign of throwing things out. That is the version of Virgo we inherited from productivity culture. Virgo is the sign of discernment, of tending, of knowing the difference between a thing that serves you and a thing that merely sits near you. Discernment is slower than decluttering and it is far more useful, because it does not need to be repeated every year.

The drawer teaches me the same lesson every August. I am rarely holding onto too much. I am usually holding onto a few things I have not been willing to name.

If you only do one thing this week

Pick one drawer, one shelf, or one corner of a wardrobe. Not the whole room. Take everything out, and before you decide anything, say out loud which of the three piles each item belongs to. Then put it all back and go make tea. That is the entire practice. The letting go will happen on its own, later, and it will be easier than it has ever been.

Six days. One drawer. No bin bags.

With love from Bali,
Myrah.

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A Piece for This Threshold

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