Home is Where the Mess Is

Growing up, our house was never "the clean house." In other words, it was "the messy house." The house that nobody wanted to visit. The only time that it got clean was when my mother would give her famous "angry speech" which usually started with You can't just pick up something if it's on the floor?! You can't just toss ONE PIECE OF TRASH into the trash can?! She would wait for me and my sisters to go to school and then she commenced with throwing everything away and I do mean EVER-Y-THING. All of the mess lying around, our toys, the furniture . . . yes, even the furniture. Moms was not playing. We would come home from school with an empty house. The only thing left in the room would be the television and our confusion echoing off the walls because she would throw away the rugs too (henceforth the echoes-come on, keep up with me here, I'm on a roll).

So here I am today continuing the tradition of messiness into my adulthood. I'm so ashamed. My little family . . . the dog, the man-friend, we're all cool with it. But sometimes I look around at the piles of fresh laundry sitting untouched on the couch . . . the computer cords and wires all sitting around on and in front of the coffee table . . . the stacks and stacks of papers lying around that my man-friend says he'll be getting to shortly . . . large paintings and frames just sitting around waiting to get hung on our empty walls (a blatant display of our sad attempt and failure at decorating) . . . oh and the dust, good god the dust. My man-friend (who's in crutches right now) almost slipped on a pile of dust the other day. He looked up at me and asked if I was trying to kill him. I'm so shamed!!! I'm supposed to be a girl. Dainty and clean. Granted it's the 21st century and women don't have to walk around with an apron and feather duster at all times, but I should have some kind of alarm in my body that goes off when I see a mess, right? Right!?! This is ridiculous.

Today I am devoting my time to gutting out my room and just throwing everything away Mom's-style. If it's in my line of vision, it's going in the trash. Papers, old cords and chargers (that I'm afraid to throw away), old tooth-brushes (that I keep telling myself I will clean the tiles in the bathroom with-AHAHAHA yeah, imagine that, aha aha . . . ahem . . . phew!), doo-dads, thing-ama-bobbits, and all the rest of the bull-sheeit that I allow to collect in my abode . . . gone! Hasta la vista! Outta here! I feel pumped . . . how bout you?! No? Not so much? Okay . . . well, I don't know what to do for you then.

All I know is that it's time to make my home liveable (well, for decent human beings anyway) and it starts today. The only thing that will be different is that I don't plan on getting rid of the dog. Yes . . . moms would get rid of the pets too when she went on her cleaning rampages. :-(