Let me preface that I know we are lucky, that I really do not want for the basics of life – food, shelter, family, friends.
But the reality of 4 people and 3 cats living in an 1140 square foot home is: Mess. Clutter. Piles. Debris. An overwhelming sense of “ohmygodwheredidallthiscrapcomefrom?!”.
Last night I came into the living room with the newspaper to find that Shara’s belongings filled the three chairs in the room, and Shara and Daniel themselves, plus cats, filled the sofa.
Our stairs are actually a shoe storage device that we negotiate carefully to get to the second floor (also avoiding Leo’s attempts to trip us as we climb them).
The dining room table is an all purpose storage area, replete with homework papers, mail, grocery lists, sunglasses, old newspapers and catalogs, dead or dying floral arrangements, and festooned with crumbs and indecipherable stains.
The bathroom overflows with products, appliances, comic books, cat litter, drying snow gear…and yet rarely has any clean towels. Hm.
Due in large part to the season, the front porch is a repository of discarded furniture and odds and ends.
Then there are the books. I just counted, and we have a total of nine bookcases throughout the house (ten if you count the one that is filled with DVDs), each of which is stuffed to the gills with books piled on books. Books wedged sideways atop upright ranks. Those books that cannot find space on a shelf lie in stacks on bedside tables, on the floor, on any flat, unoccupied surface.
We’ve run out of room for our CDs, nearly half of which reside in unsteady piles which Leo knocks over on his regular, inelegant clamber up to the top of the speakers (very few of our CD cases still have both front and back pieces joined together).
I try to ameliorate this cacophany with periodic purges of garbage-bag-fuls of items noone has noticed or used in 6 months or more, but it never seems to make a dent in the volume.
I gaze longingly at the spare, clean living spaces in Wednesday’s Home section of the NYT. Intellectually I know they’ve just had a professional cleaning and staging crew in, but all the same I have this vision of the families living in the serene spaces depicted, and am envious.
(Also: the vacuum cleaner seems to have taken up residence on our bedroom floor.)
Sounds like my house. Why are we Bassler girls such slobs?
WE are not. WE live with slobs. It is our eternal burden to have to try and deal with it.
Did you ever see my apartment before I met the neatest man in world and love of my life? Mark is both handsome and organized. Also, have you been in dad’s office? Our DNA betrays us.
Apparently I inherited Mom’s organization gene.
Ask me where anything, any item, is in our house and I can tell you.
Even if it lies under a pile of old homework papers and dirty socks.
When I was in my late 20’s I found myself, as I do now, unemployed, if not for a much shorter period of time. To make ends meet I became the roommate of a woman who was the biggest slob I had ever met or seen. Seriously… 2-feet thick debris of clothes, books, personal items, etc. littered her bedroom floor. So much so that she no longer slept in her bedroom, but on the living room sofa.
(sigh)
I was already a fairly organized and fastidious kind of guy, but living with her forced me to new and dizzying heights or organizational skills as I now had only a single bedroom for me and my stuff (including five cats).
The degree of my anal retentiveness showed itself when my best friend George asked to borrow my deodorant to help hide his odor after we had played some tennis. He took down the stick of deodorant from it’s very specific location on the shelf in the closet, made use of it and replaced it approximately 1-inch too far to the right.
One-inch. Too far.
I moved it over and he simply stared at me as if I had lost my mind.
Sensing his concern for my sanity I motioned him to follow me and gave him a quick tour of my roommate’s bedroom by simply pushing open her door as far as it would open, which wasn’t much. He nodded in understanding and nothing was ever said about my deodorant and its placement.
As a teenager, I had a tray upon which I kept my makeup. My OCD led me to outline upon the tray the exact shape and location of each item of makeup, so as to replace them exactly in their specific spot.
What I am saying is: I, too, would have moved the deodorant.
Ohhh KPod. We must have been separated at birth, which is completely possible since my father’s side of the family is from (and many remain) in Wisconsin.
Yeah, but I wasn’t born a cheesehead.
I didn’t know that you outlined the shape and location of each item of makeup on a tray. I don’t even recall that had such a tray or that you wore makeup (much)! Aaaarghhh! The memory is gooooingggg!
Don’t blame the memory – as I recall, I didn’t let you in my room very often.
I don’t remember any makeup tray, either! And I snuck into your room ALL THE TIME!!!
btw, Mark has been impersonating me and making outrageous claims that he is handsome and tidy.
“Milo’s Mom” = Mark
“Steph” = me
really.
Now I don’t know what to believe anymore.