Procrastination Pays?

I’ve been meaning to clean out the service porch for months now. It is a very small room that houses the washer and dryer, the water heater, the furnace, a utility sink, my vacuum cleaner, pet supplies, tools, cleaning supplies, and several bottles of purified water. Not bad for a 6.5 x 9 foot room. At any rate, as you may imagine, it gets cluttered and dusty, and needs periodic clean outs.

So, I’ve been meaning to do it.

Last night the water heater started leaking, and it didn’t stop. Out came the towels and buckets, and everything else in the room needed to move to the living room. A few hours of mopping, sorting, and rearranging bins, and the service porch is now clean.

What I want to know is this: did the cosmos lend a hand in inspiring me to get this job done that I was planning on doing anyway, or is this a case of “be careful what you ask for?”

The Queen of Clean

is my mother. When I was growing up, our house was clean. I mean really clean. It was both sanitary and clutter free. My mother spent the majority of each day cleaning, what to my eyes as a child, was a completely clean house. Our house was Better Homes and Gardens clean. The President could have stopped by at any moment and my mom would not have been embarrassed by the state of her house.

My mother always walked around the house picking things up. If my brother or I left our books, toys, or other childish clutter around, my mother picked it up and put it away, or told us to do so. If we left a glass of water on the table, and left the room for a moment, my mother emptied it and put it in the dishwasher.

I loved to go to other people’s houses, and was always interested to learn that they weren’t necessarily clean all of the time. You see, I thought that everyone’s house was as clean as ours. I was especially fascinated by my friends’ rooms. Not only were they not always clean, sometimes they were downright disaster areas. Ann, my best friend Allison’s mom, loves to tell the story to this day about the night I stayed over at her house and we pre-teens slept among the piles of clean laundry that Allison had not yet folded and put away. This was a totally alien experience for me. My mom would have been horrified if the clean laundry was not neatly folded and put away immediately in an orderly fashion, in militarily neat dresser drawers. Did you know that some people just toss their socks and under things into drawers without folding them? I never knew this until I was in college and had a roommate.

When I turned eight or so, I got to help clean the perfectly clean house. Of course, I thought this pointless. The house was clean already. My room was clean. I was not allowed to let my room get dirty.

So, kids do one of two things; they either become like their parents, or they become reactionary to them. Where do you suppose I landed?

Oh, and by the way, I have a friend who says my mom cannot be the Queen of Clean, because his mom is the Queen of Clean. You mean there are two of them?

Work Space Rejuvenation

In the midst of all of the work to prepare for the new semester, I decided that my study needed rearranging. My brain was feeling stagnant, and I was getting burned out—so the obvious solution was to feng shui my study.

My poor husband had to move a very heavy 1940s desk, along with all of the scary electronic spaghetti behind it. Bookcases needed shifting, and all of the wall art and calendars are still in the wrong places. The hamster was traumatized when his cage got shuffled from one unfamiliar surface to another.

But to me, it’s been worth the trouble. The desk and computer (to which I have been chained) now faces the window, which looks out to trees, birds, and the birdbath. The cool breeze blows in, and it looks so peaceful in the morning. I do have my back to the door as I type this, but I’m willing to risk it. I have placed in the room a vintage modern chair that I am revamping, and am slowly working through the piles of detritus from last year’s activities.

My only feng shui question now is: I have a rug for the room and I can’t decide if it’s better feng shui to align the rug according to the furniture (Chinese design/feng shui is all about symmetry), or should I use it to cover up the worse of the ugly stains in the carpet?

Maybe a latte would help me decide.

I am a Neat Nick

I make my bed everyday. It’s all I can do not to make everyone’s bed everyday. Being compulsively neat is a disease. I get it from my mom, the Queen of Clean.

Being a neat nick makes life for both you and the ones who share your space difficult at times, and this is why.

The people you live with are not neat nicks--they never are--trust me. So, they cannot stand the fact that you are always tidying, even if you have completely given up on them ever cleaning anything. You begin to tidy their things, which they oddly consider to be an invasion of their space and privacy.

Life is difficult for you, because no matter how much the people with whom you share your space tidy, clean, and otherwise enable you, it is not enough.

Because it is never enough. I have never once said to myself, “The house is now clean.”

I live with two people who are not neat nicks. I have learned to just let things be messy. There are piles of paper work all over the house, and FEMA should be notified about my study. Both showers need scrubbing. I don’t like it, but I don’t want to pass on my illness to my son. Nor do I want to be divorced. So my house stays messy.

Clearly I have succeeded in my quest to raise a well-adjusted, non-neat nick child. In fact, you should see my son’s room; that is, if you can find it under the clutter.

Clutter, trust me, of which I am acutely, painfully aware.

I Was Feeling So Virtuous

Yesterday I cleaned out my closet and only found seven handbags. I kept four, and put three in the giveaway box. I felt so virtuous.

Today while looking for my hand weights, so I could have tank top arms for the summer, I found an entire bag of handbags hiding in the back of the cupboard. I didn’t have the heart to go through them.

I never did find my weights. I used rocks. God knows we have enough of them around here.

The Packrat

My dad is a packrat, not your garden variety, "Fibber McGee's Closet" kind of packrat, not your "can't close the garage door" kind of packrat, not even your "needs to rent storage space" kind of packrat. My dad is such a packrat that he had to buy a warehouse. A big warehouse.

Recently my dad called me and said, “Do you need a freezer?”
“No, Dad, I still have the freezer you gave me five years ago.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. I don’t really even need that freezer. We really don’t use it.”

You see, my dad loves to buy things. It's not that he needs, or even wants the things--he just likes to buy them. He loves a good deal. He loves to bargain for the lowest prices. He loves garage sales. He will stop by someone's house--a complete stranger mind you--and ask if a particular object seen in the yard is for sale. He just loves the thrill of the hunt.

Once when I was at my parent’s house, everyone was sitting around watching Field of Dreams, it was the scene when they turn on the stadium lights for the first time in the corn fields. Me, being a smart aleck said, “Oh, sure, where do you get stadium lights?” My dad said, "I have some.”

What?

Lately I’ve been looking at my closet doors, thinking that I would really rather have those louvered accordion-style folding ones. I thought to myself, hmmmm--no, he couldn’t. So I took a chance before heading to my local home store, and called him up. I described what I was looking for, and guess what he said?

He said, “What size do you need?”