Once upon a time, I lived with my parents. They were not neat people. Granted, we cleaned on a weekly basis, but it involved moving the tchotchkes to dust around them and putting them back where they had been. They served no useful purpose, mind you, but this was the desired process my mother forced upon us.
Now that I think about it, the kitchen counter was almost never de-cluttered to allow for a proper cleansing. The right side of the kitchen, between the sink and the stove, was where the majority of the cooking took place, so it got a daily wipe down even if there were things that had to be moved temporarily to do so, or more often than not they were wiped around. But it was the left side of the kitchen, the expanse of counter between the sink and the refrigerator, that held my disdain.
We lived in a small house – <1,000 square feet containing a living room, eat-in kitchen, three bedrooms and one bathroom, and a utility room. There was absolutely NO place for a desk, or any place to even file anything, so the left side of the kitchen became the Land of Misfit Papers/Junk. It was where all the mail got tossed, whether it was opened or not. I grew up believing that everyone waited until they got the pink slip in the mail to pay their electric bill (yeah, I get it now). And that was because there was no filing system, no way of keeping tracks of the bills, because everything was tossed in the same place: baseball schedules, errant socks, outdated newspapers, rubber bands, permission slips (usually NOT signed), grade cards, shopping lists, birthday party invitations, tax forms, my mom’s curling iron and hair products (yes, she did her hair at the kitchen table every morning- ick), etc. See the problem here?
I realized when I was quite young (like nine or ten years old), that I had a tendency to want my room tidy. Hard to do when you share a bedroom with a sister who shucks her clothes and leaves them where they laid. I even once used tape to separate our room so my side could stay neat and tidy. This tendency I had? Yeah, it’s OCD…I understand and accept the diagnosis. But this went beyond my bedroom and the kitchen counter. I would often count to four – a LOT – much like Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory always knocks three times on Penny’s door. Almost everything had to be done in fours. I also typed words with my fingers as I would speak, something that I found I had in common with my high school Spanish teacher, a kindred spirit.
I was a neat freak, plain and simple. Perhaps it was in my nature, or because of/in spite of the way my parents chose to live (and subsequently my sister AND my brother), who knows, but I was constantly picking up after everyone. I tried to organize the kitchen counter, but had to give that up when I realized I couldn’t keep up – and my mom got mad for misplacing something. The irony!
I would even gather things from the living room and literally dump them on my siblings’ beds so that they would be forced to deal with them or put them away before they could sleep that night. Although, you guessed it, more often than not everything ended up on the floor (that’s probably what elicited the partitioning of our shared bedroom with tape), but at least it wasn’t in the living room!
I never had friends over because I was always afraid of what the house would look like when I got home. When I was in high school, it finally dawned on me that this was a battle I would never win. My parents weren’t going to change, and it was clear my siblings were on the same path as them. I was the odd man out. So I swore that some day when I have my own house, I would not live that way. I moved out a few years later, and yes indeed, even my college apartment was kept neat, tidy, and almost spotless. (I do say almost because all-nighters to study for a Chemistry test sometimes precluded the dusting.)
#1 was NOT a neat person, either, and that was the root cause of the one and only time we broke up while dating. I should have heeded that, but I thought I was in love and that he would change. Ha. And he was probably ecstatic that he had someone like his mother to clean up after him. Yes, I became the mother figure in that relationship – something I am not proud of – but I have definitely learned from it.
Having children lends a whole other challenge to those of us with OCD, mostly because of the disarray that accompanies said children. When they are old enough to motor about on their own, they leave a trail of destruction in their wake. One thing I did was just not have so many toys out and available to my oldest, though I did rotate them out weekly so that he didn’t get bored. It made clean up a lot easier, I wasn’t limiting him, and I actually included him in putting the toys away (you just sang the Barney clean-up song, didn’t you?).
This worked for us. Believe me, I needed all the help I could get because by the time the second one was walking, the marriage was done. There’s only so much a working mom with two kids who does everything around the house except mow the yard (and I even did THAT most of the time) can handle until she eventually snaps. I was forced to relax the OCD a bit because I just couldn’t deal with the stress. However, in that time I had learned that it’s a lot easier to keep the house neat than to try to be in a constant state of coming from behind. I learned that if I invited friends over, I was much more inclined to do the deep cleaning that I usually neglected (seriously, who cleans baseboards…ever?). I still do this. :-)
So at that time, I elicited help from the boys. They each got a few chores to do, and I had some help keeping things normal. It was normal for them, too, because they weren’t used to a messy house. They’d go visit my brothers’ kids and come home quite appreciative of the environment in which we lived…we didn’t have trails marked through piles in the house. Sometimes seeing how other people live is enough to make them appreciate what they have. Enough said.
There was also some turmoil that began shortly after my marriage to #2. I’ve outlined the issues before so I won’t go into it now, but having a tidy home helped to keep things calm for me and the boys. Some people thrive on chaos, and if that works for them, by all means let the tornado fly. But it’s just not for me. If my house is tidy, if everything (well, almost everything) is in its proper place, and there is little clutter to distract me, then I am soothed. I also feel that with the stress we’ve all been through during and after #2’s presence in the house, keeping the environment they are in as stress-free as possible served to help them to heal.
They say your home is your sanctuary, and I feel it every day. I need the serenity I get from walking in the door and know that everything should be as I found it. Granted, with three boys running/wrestling/horsing around, that may not always be the case, but they are pretty good about putting things back where they belong. Not always, but they understand (remember, they’ve seen how my nephews have lived in the past). I’m not saying we’re perfect and there’s never any drama in my house – it happens sometimes, even with boys! But we are very low-key most of the time, and I think they appreciate that. Plus I allow them to kind of do what they want as far as their bedrooms go. I may suggest they clean their rooms, but I don’t throw a fit about it. I pick my battles.
I recently had to take care of a friends’ pet while she was out of town, and TK came with me. I commented while walking through her small duplex that I could not live this way – the clutter, the dirt, the unnecessary junk was just too much for me. There was almost no place to sit in the living room, the kitchen counter and table were covered with stuff…you couldn’t even sit at the table to eat. Now, I love my friend and her kids, and if they are okay with that lifestyle, that’s great for them. But it’s not for me, and that’s all I said.
However, I realize how TK may have taken that comment. You see, I have yet to step foot inside his house. Oh, I have been there several times, but it’s usually to pick up/drop off TK and/or his kids, so even if I have gotten out of my car, I have never been farther than the driveway. This didn’t bother me at first, because he has commented from the beginning how much he enjoys the peace and serenity at my house.
And yet, the first time I mentioned stopping by his house on a night I could come and see him instead of him always coming to my house, I was turned down. He said he was tired and going to bed, and it wasn’t even 9:00! He makes fun of me if I go to bed before 10:00, so I tried to let it go, telling myself that it wasn’t about me.
Another night, there had been miscommunication regarding our regularly scheduled date night. It wasn’t until after 9:00 before we had a conversation about it, when he told me he had thought I could come over and hang out with him that night. Of course, it was way too late for that, but I told him that would have been nice, I would have enjoyed that, if he had actually INVITED me! And yet, even though it was only 9:30, he didn’t.
More recently, I made a comment that I could come over to his house on those nights I did not have my youngest son, which are every Wednesday, our standing date night. He hesitated, then made some excuse, so I called him on it. I asked why he seemed to not want me to ever come to his house, why when I have been over, he’s always waiting outside for me, as though he doesn’t want me to come in.
He told me a story then, about how he has not been comfortable having women in his house since his wife died. I said sometihng about him not being comfortable with me, and he was immediately chagrined. He said that’s not the case, that he is very comfortable with me and wouldn’t mind me being in his house. But that’s how it’s been for so long that he just didn’t think about it til now, and that I am welcome.
This past Sunday, he wasn’t feeling well. I picked him up for a couple’s massage that he’d scheduled for us. When I dropped him off, having told him I had nothing to do that day til I picked my son up at 6:00, he said nothing about me coming in and hanging out with him and the kids. I told later I had wanted to take care of him and I shouldn’t have to ask, and he said no I shouldn’t, that I could come and go as I pleased.
Hmmmmm, okay. And then yesterday, since he had to work til 8:00, I asked if I could come over when he got home and spend time with him, and with the kids. He told me he had been thinking that he would come and see me instead. While that is perfectly fine with me, is it just me or is there a pattern here? I am sensing there is a lot more to this than he is letting on.
And this is what I have come up with, what ties this in with the theme of this blog: I wonder if his house is like the one I grew up in, like my friends’ house is? He knows how I feel about it since we have discussed it before, though I have never been derogatory about it because these are people I care about and if they are happy to live like that, then who am I to judge? But I also fear that he has taken it too much to heart and thinks I will judge him if he lives that way, too. Does that make sense?
I honestly don’t give a rat’s ass how he lives. I mean, he’s well-groomed and his kids are clean and taken care of, so that’s not an issue for me. But I do wonder if he is embarrassed by the state of his house. He has told me several things, like that his dad is not good about cleaning (more like shuffling things into piles and then moving them around), that his sister’s’ two dogs are NOT house trained and tend to pee and poop all over the house (this makes me sick), that he has several appliances that are not working or only partially working, that he had to fix a leak in a shower wall by accessing the wall from behind (and me thinks that perhaps he didn’t fix the hole he made to do so). Not exactly the living conditions I am used to.
I don’t want him to be embarrassed, though I can understand how he might be. And his long term goal of wanting a nice house could either be because he wants out of the one he’s in and is striving towards that, or because he has seen mine and it’s what he would want for himself (I have a great house and I love it). We’re getting into the “living together” territory and I don’t want to stray too far off topic with this, but it is a way for him to get the nice house, have less stress in his life, etc. BUT, it also makes me wonder if he would choose to just walk away from that house. He has alluded to some financial issues in the past, and I think that’s a possibility if there are more things wrong with the house that he couldn’t really afford to fix. I understand that has happened a lot in this economy, and it might be a pride thing with him. We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.
I know I am not perfect – far from it! I have my flaws, have certainly made mistakes. But one thing I have realized is that you truly have to learn from those mistakes and move on and hopefully not repeat them. TK has told me that he wants to be a better parent, more like me, and I took that as the compliment it was intended to be. He has said he wants to live in a nice house like mine – same thing. He said I make him want to be a better person, more giving, more loving, more altruistic – like me. Apparently he must think I live a perfect life to want to emulate me so much!
Joking aside, I really appreciate that he sees what I have accomplished and wants to try harder, to be a better father, partner, person. And he makes me want to be a better person, too. I am accountable to someone else again, someone who encourages my running and is proud of me for accomplishing my goals, someone who appreciates my job – that while it isn’t physically taxing like his, it still has its challenges. Someone who makes fun of my OCD.
Yes, he teases me, but in subtle ways. When I make the bed, sometimes he will turn the corner up just to mess with me. Or he will rearrange things on the kitchen counter. Or he will unfold a towel that I had folded. But I take it all in fun, because I know he loves me and accepts me for who I am. Tidy house and all.
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