The sink read her mind too well.
“I guess some portable pots and pans are what you need. You can’t use them all, I think.”
That was true.
“Hey, master! Look at me, please!”
This time it was her main bedroom. The wardrobe that occupied one wall called her.
“Look! Why are you storing all these clothes that don’t fit you?”
“Well, I can wear them when I lose my weight,” she said in a feeble voice.
“Losing your weight? Puhaaaaa!”
She felt bad when the wardrobe sneered at her.
“I’m going to lose my weight.”
At that moment she recalled Manager Kyong’s suggestion on the diet project.
‘Do I need to reveal the measurement of my abdominal muscle?’
The wardrobe responded casually, “Whether you lose your weight or not, it’s none of my business. What are you going to do with this wedding dress? You’re not going to wear it again, right?”
“That dress…..”
She had to throw it away.
“What about all these clothes for four seasons messed up here?”
“It looks like you don’t know this famous brand.”
“No idea. Though I don’t know anything about fashion, I wonder if these discolored brand dresses smelling of mold can give you an avant-garde atmosphere when you wear it?”
Mold? Discolored? They can’t be!
They were pretty expensive!
Those clothes were the pride of a fashion reporter like Arum. That was kind of a dress museum that stored unique dress items.
Discolored?
She hurriedly took out the clothes from the wardrobe.
“Oops!”
The brand name clothes smelled musty and stale.
“Did you smell it?” asked the wardrobe.
As the smell was so strong, she couldn’t answer. Her pride was offended, so she didn’t feel up to responding.
It was possible that her clothes smelled musty. She knew how difficult it was to take care of her clothes in Korea, which has four distinct seasons. In particular, it was really hard and challenging to avoid mold in the humid climate during the summer.
“This happened because I didn’t use a spray to remove the mold. I can fix it right away.”
She checked her clothes from the expensive dress she received from a fashion designer as a gift to limited edition leather skirt and tailor-made suits.
All the clothes were moldy.
It seemed that her whole house had been taken over by mold, from the refrigerator to the wardrobe.
She closed the wardrobe quickly and lowered her head for a moment.
While her head was lowered, she heard more noise.
“It’s too small! Too small! too small! Too small!”
The desk drawer and the storage closet began to shout in unison, “Too small!”
The whole house seemed to push her out, full of anger and blame.
“What’s the matter with you? Why are you guys so mean to me?” Arum complained.
Tired and stressed out, she couldn’t stand it anymore.
“So, what do you want me to do?”
She sat down on the floor.
All the items in her house threw a tantrum, demanding her to clean up the house. She was too embarrassed.
“Why are you so mean to just me?” Half the items and boxes in the house belonged to Konsu. “Complain to that bastard, not me.”
The sink responded, “It’s you who brought all this stuff to your house, obsessed with us. Konsu doesn’t even remember us!”
That was true.
Konsu was only concerned with surviving, and he didn’t show any willingness to dispose of this stuff together.
“You want me to throw away all this on my own?”
“Absolutely! It all belongs to you.”
The sink and all the other items seemed to wait for her decision.
“Got it. Let me throw you guys away!” She shouted loudly and opened the refrigerator first.
She didn’t know where to start cleaning. It seemed as if all the foods she needed to dump were hidden somewhere.
“Nothing to throw away here….”
“What?”
The refrigerator was dumbfounded to hear that.
“Let me eat it over the weekend, and let me put this in the freezer. Let me freeze these rotten vegetables before dumping,” she said.
“Why? Don’t you want to dump them now?”
“I don’t have a waste bag now…”
“Buy it right away!” The refrigerator ordered.
“Sorry.” She stepped back from the refrigerator. “Let me sort through my wardrobe first. I’ll be back in a minute.”
She then ignored the refrigerator and walked to the wardrobe.
She opened it again, Let me clean it out quickly.
She took out all the clothes first.
“Wait. I can put you back in the best condition once I rearrange the wardrobe.”
She took out the clothes on the hangers, in the drawers, as well as all the handbags and scarves and put them on the floor and piled them up like a mountain. She had no idea that she had so much stuff.
“You’re amazing,” Arum said to the wardrobe. “How have you contained all this stuff?”
“Are you kidding me? Don’t you remember you stuck all this in here?”
“Sorry. Let me rearrange them right away.”
When she looked at the clothes strewn here and there on the floor, she felt stuffy. She regretted taking them out first as she couldn’t figure out what to clean first.
When she attended school as a child, she received an award for cleaning the classroom. There were not many items that an elementary boy or girl could store in their lockers other than school supplies, but she had to clean her house, not just her room.
As she took out all her clothes from the wardrobe, it was her job to clean, rearrange and put them back in neatly.
She grabbed a sweater then picked up a T-shirt. Though she had no problem with making decisions, she couldn’t figure out which clothes she should sort first.
Can I finish this today? Suddenly, she got nervous. Dang it. This job is too big for me to finish alone.
She remembered that somebody said the same thing, “Ah! Hojoon.”
He said that back then. He asked her not to do it alone. He told her they should clean it together.
She didn’t know where he was. She wished she had let him help her with it then.
Yes, let me split with him once and for all.
She clenched her fists suddenly.
She sat down at the table and searched on her smartphone for his online lectures on feng shui.
An online video titled caught her eye.
“Cleaning can change one’s life?”
Folding her arms, she stared at the smartphone screen.
“Did you clean your house before coming here?”
Asking the question to the audience, Hojoon started his lecture.
She didn’t think much about cleaning because it was just routine and ordinary. Everybody did it every day, after all, but while listening to his lecture, she learned something.
“Cleaning revives the energy of your house. When we see the monks’ empty rooms, do we say they are poor? Nope. We say they’re neat and clean. We say we feel an aura of special energy around them. Why? It’s because their energy is circulating smoothly. If you keep things clean and don’t have too much stuff in your house, cleaning is an easy job for you. Look at this.”
Hojoon showed the audience a file picture. The picture showed a living room in a messy state, children’s books, a husband’s golf clubs and the wife’s plates were strewn here and there.
“What do you feel when you see this?”
The audience began to react, “I just stuffy.”
“How could I live in a place like that?”
“Yes, you’re right. You feel stuffy. Look here now. As the bookshelf blocked the veranda window, this room doesn’t get much sunlight. It’s dark.”
The living room in the picture was lit even during the day, but it still seemed dark.
“Dark, gloomy and a depressing atmosphere: the negative energy shrouds the whole house. What about the mood of this family then?”
Although he asked the question, the audience didn’t answer easily.
“Same as the atmosphere of this house. They looked depressed, lacking in confidence and down all the time. The house you are now living in reflects your inner self. As you have heard my lecture up to now, what do you feel? You want to go back to your house and clean it, don’t you?”
The audience answered in unison, “Yes!”
“Just throw it away. Something ugly, something that makes you feel bad, something that reminds you of sad memories and miscellaneous items in your house. Then, clean it. Now fill your house with good stuff that makes you feel great by looking at it. Even if I insist on you like this, you’re not going to dump it, right? Why? It’s because you feel empty. Right?”
The middle-aged audience reacted enthusiastically.
“But just forget about it all and dump it immediately. What you have to feel really precious about is your sweet home. Only when you dump it can you regain your composure.”