The Armageddon Closet, Reimagined | Catherine Viel

By Catherine Viel, June 12, 2022

(Golden Age of Gaia)

June 11, 2022

I’m finding my focus moving evermore inward. Still keeping track of happenings, through what I consider reliable sources, but in a mostly passive way.

Emulating the idealized 1950s middle-class American housewife, I’m happiest while making home and family comfortable, secure, and last but not least, prettied up. Purchasing a few trinkets. Doing a spot of redecorating inside, filling pots with flowers on the patio. All mundane actions, yet satisfying on multiple levels. Flowers make my soul sing.

Part of this house-and-garden puttering is my perpetual organizing and decluttering. Looking through closets that need attention, I realized that the extra food I’ve “temporarily” stocked up on has settled into permanent residency.

But I launched the Armageddon closet in a slapdash fashion, motivated by what became two years of almost perpetual lockdowns and continuous fear-mongering about food shortages. It’s never been well organized. The supplies took up space on an inconvenient lower shelf that was hard to get to.



Staring into the closet the other day, I realized I could make one shift and not only would those supplies be visible and accessible, it would be something I wouldn’t mind living with for an indeterminate amount of time.

Along with this realization, I knew I wanted to stop thinking of this as the Armageddon closet. Disaster supplies. Emergency rations for the end of time.

I made the changes, both physical and mental. The cans and packages are now accessible in what I’ve mentally relabeled the auxiliary pantry. I’m thinking of the contents as party food, ready for a future that will include houseguests and gatherings of friends.

Perhaps this is one way we shift, subtly and effortlessly, toward higher dimensions and more joyful and heart-centered ways of living. One small but significant shift from disaster thinking to “We’re going to have a party!“

Something to look forward to, instead of something to fear. That’s a shift I’m happy to live with.