When I was in high school, actually for my entire childhood, I shared a room with my sister. We were two girls in a small space with a LOT of stuff. At least that's the excuse I always made for why our room was so messy. We did clean on occasion however. Once, after I had cleaned, my friend Janel came over. When we went upstairs to my room she said, "You have a desk? I never knew you had a desk!" As sarcastic as she is, I still think she was serious. That desk was always piled high with "not quite dirty" clothes. Come on, you have a pile like that too.
When I was in college you couldn't even see the floor to my bedroom most days. That's particularly alarming because my bedroom was nearly all floor; I had a loft for my bed. I used to come in, dump out my bag, load it up with whatever I needed next, and leave again.
My first several years of teaching, before I started job sharing, my teacher's desk used to be buried under piles of papers. I never sat at the thing,and so I just kept setting things on it. About twice a year I'd get it all cleaned off. Kids used to tell me on my end of the year teacher report card that I need to work on "finding things." I bet that was the most common response.
But now, now everything has changed. I found myself standing in front of our futon, which is in the main room of the house, hyperventilating on Monday evening. It was piled high with sleeping bags, pillows, jackets, backpacks, books, papers, dolls, bags, markers, crayons, and on and on. I had asked for it to be cleaned off on Sunday and Saturday already, and yet here it was Monday and now it had even more stuff piled on it.
The hyperventilating must be becoming a common occurrence because I didn't even get out the first sentence of my sentence of my rant before Russ put his hands on my shoulders and said softly, "I got it. Don't worry." Since I was actually in the middle of six other things, dinner, homework, chores times three, I walked away and let it go.
Actually, by 7:30 it was all cleaned up and I felt much calmer. When did I become a person who had low clutter tolerance? When did I require the main space of my house to be spartan in order to have inner peace? Huh.
5 comments:
Oy! That damn loft! How many times did I whack my head on that stupid thing? GAH!!!! Thanks for the memories! LOLOL :) *wink*
As for the neat-nick side of you coming out... I think becoming a parent causes many of us to become organized... you have to keep track of so much more, and you find that it is so much easier to do so in an orderly fashion.
I'm right there with ya on the hyperventilating over clutter...
On a side note... remember the time someone wanted me to wake you up because the power had gone off during the night and she thought you should be responsible for waking everyone up who might have an early class? She *said* it was an emergency. NOT!
Oh, I know it! I used to be the messiest little kid, and now it's like I can't even function unless stuff is in it's spot. So weird how I changed. I think it must have been college. All those years of cleaning to get out of studying must have made me think that I had to have it clean to concentrate. Weird.
Listen, it's been a LONG time since I lived with you guys that summer. There's no way I rubbed off on you that long ago and it's just taking hold. This is NOT my fault... but welcome to the dark side. :-)
I love to clean. There I said it. I had an incredibly messy room as a child, mearly for the reason that I got to clean it up. To this day I love to clean our home and organize and catagorize and sigh, I could go on and on :) The thought of your couch filled with stuff waiting to be put away makes me smile - I wish I could have been there to help :)
Does it make you feel better to know that on my return from vacation, my 23 year old son had cleaned my kitchen. I mean CLEANED my kitchen. Washed down the cupboards, washed the floor, put the shoes that pile in the corner away. I mean it looked great. He cleaned it because he had friends coming over, and he was embarrassed about how it looked. I feel embarrassed that it bothered him, but hey, I'd still rather read! I almost, but not quite, wish it bothered me more. But - I do work full time and I am "old" as he always likes to remind me, and currently, he does live here for free, so I'm thinking I'll just take it as a gift :-)
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