My in-laws came to visit us after Christmas. Paw in law has a serious “go gettum” attitude; so much so that I have seriously considered whether he would sink like a shark if he ever stopped moving. He’s ten minutes early for everything. Dishes barely touch the bottom of the sink before they’re washed and put away.
My house is a startling dichotomy to his. Laundry sits in the drier until we ruffle through and pick out the outfit we’re going to wear today, shoving the unused stuff back in the drier. When someone else wants to use the drier, we form a “clean clothes pile” that’s probably a bit too close to the “dirty clothes pile”. If it smells fine to you, it’ll smell fine to everyone else right?
I’ve always been a little embarassed about the dust and dirty carpets and broken computer parts and toddler toys that are littered all about my place, but the final straw of mortified horror came when mom and dad in law were here from Phoenix playing with their grandson, my firstborn. I came out of the shower to find my wife and her mother hanging out in our living room, and my father in law nowhere to be found. My wife gave me an urgent kind of look, and said “can you go see what dad’s up to in the garage?”
So, you remember how bad my house is, right? Well imagine that times about thirty, and that’s my garage. A missile nailing a warehouse with a direct hit, during an 8.5 earthquake, a tsunami, and a hurricane couldn’t make a mess as awful as the one in my garage. I realized why my wife had seemed so panicked. I felt it too - the dread that someone had exposed us. It was like waiting for the gallows. When I opened the garage door, there was old man Cooper tidying everything up. I didn’t know what to say.
“Hey! Looks a lot better in here now, doesn’t it?” he said in a proud, sort of excited ‘look at how good I’m doing!’ tone. I don’t remember what I said, but it couldn’t have been much more than “yeah, it does,” before I closed the door and wished to die. I was too embarassed to go back in. I didn’t even look at the garage until they left, but I have to admit that the old man knows what he’s doing when it comes to cleaning up. Nothing’s lost, either.
So here’s my new years resolution; I will never feel that way again. As of friday (when the folks left) I’ve begun the long process of getting my house in order. All of my laundry is hung up or folded and put away. All my dishes are done. I’ve done away with the clean clothes pile entirely, and I’m making some serious progress on the dirty pile. The computer room doesn’t have stacks of junk bulging against the closet doors from the inside anymore. Our coat and shoe closet miraculously no longer has things other than coats and shoes in it. Even my slobby computer-geek-gamer desk looks fresh and naked without all the dr. pepper cans, software packaging, and scraps of paper all over it.
I have a long way to go, though. I could still probably fill a trash bag with all the junk mail I haven’t thrown out yet. My backyard could use some serious attention, too. The weeds are starting to look ominous. The garage could use some more work, because my father in law didn’t throw away anything he wasn’t sure of.
Oh, I almost forgot! I have one more resolution that kind of ties in with the first. I’m going to purge my house of about 30% of the “stuff” that’s laying around everywhere. There’s so much stuff that there isn’t even a place for everything to go. I’m also going to put my foot down and doggedly resist any attempt my wife or extended family makes to give us more stuff. It’s almost impossible to prevent the acquisition of stuff when you have a one year old who’s the first grandchild on BOTH sides of the family, but I’ll be damned if I let it get as bad as it has been again.
Anyone care to take bets on how long this lasts? I’m full of tidying energy at the moment, but moments like these have come and gone as soon as the embarassment has had time to fade. Wish me luck!
I’m a slob who is not so much reformed as held in check by not wanting to let my tidy other half down. I keep things uncluttered/clean just enough not to make life miserable for him. Good luck!