Chapters (52)
Sticky describes a turquoise jumpsuit that I wore in the 1980s. Even though I haven’t worn it for years, I can’t throw it away. I wrote that turquoise jumpsuit into the novel. When Emily takes it from her closet to decide whether to keep or toss, “it remind[s] her of her juicier, less mousy self, one she hoped she hadn’t consigned to the rubbish bin on her journey from free spirit to elementary school teacher and on to professional organizer.” In the end, she folds it and keeps it. (Having written the jumpsuit into my novel, I was finally able to give it away.)
As I was developing Emily’s technique for working with her clients, I wondered if taking photographs of sticky items and stitching them together into an animated digital memory book might help people let go. Many of the professional organizers I spoke with said they have used digital photograph albums to help their clients let go of clutter. That’s how the idea behind Emily’s professional organizing business, Freeze-Frame Clutter Kickers, was born.
I was inspired by Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train when I wrote the scene in which Emily vents to her client Quinn about Frank’s clutter. They bond over too much wine, imagining how much more pleasant if would be without their spouses. Quinn offers an ominous toast: “To accidents waiting to happen.”
I tell people that my husband is not a character in the book. Really, he’s not. But his stuff is. And Emily and Frank’s basement in the book bears more than a passing resemblance to ours (last I checked)—from a defunct church pew, to vintage fans and radios, to a life-sized porcelain cat. Antiquarian books, bird prints, and old maps like the ones my husband collects drive one of the subplots.
Like Emily, I’m joking when I say that sometimes I’d like to kill my husband for all the stuff he drags home. In fact, my husband and I have reached a kind of détente. He keeps his finds out of sight and I ignore what’s accumulating around the edges. I try never to look in his closet. Or our garage. Or our attic. Or in the trunk of his car. Meanwhile—and I wouldn’t tell him this—I look forward to what he’ll bring home next because, with any luck, it will inspire the plot for my next book. 