The other day, I walked in to Katherine’s messy room barely concealing my disgust. Another round of tidying and moving and purging. Katherine is a collector of things big and small. Any drawer, box or bag that you open in her room has a collection of seemingly unrelated things. If you ask her about it though she will provide with a perfectly reasonable explanation for why those things are exactly where they are.

As I began to clear off Katherine’s bed, I paused at the moment in time captured by the still life of mess.

On her bed was her new favorite stuffy, a pink and black male leopard named Rainbow. He snuggled up to a pine cone, one of a collection gathered during neighborhood walks with Daisy, then cleaned and put in various boxes throughout the room. Behind Rainbow sat a small lava lamp that Katherine uses to light the fort she has created out of blankets and pillows at the top of our stairs. She has made this fort now for four days straight. On the other side of the bed is an American Girl magazine, marked with answers to quiz questions and circles around ideas for projects. And in front of the magazine sits a calculator, one of Katherine’s favorite toys that she will use to add and subtract bigger and bigger numbers.

Somehow, in the moment I realized I needed to photograph the mess. To hold in place that one moment of time that when looked at and understood tells such a perfect story of a six year old little girl.