The following is an excerpt from The Joy of Being Disorganized by Pam Young.
In 2006, the furniture company IKEA released the results of a survey I found very interesting.
Two of the findings were that:
(It’s not surprising absolutely nobody owns a Palm Pilot anymore.)
Being organized isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. Even organized people have issues. In fact, most serial killers are highly organized people. They make meticulous plans—probably have a to-do list all written up for each step. They tend to the details and don’t leave messes behind. The point in all this is that being better at organization doesn’t make you a better person. So give yourself a break and stop putting organized people up on a pedestal and subsequently putting yourself down.
Growing up, my childhood home was perpetually neat and tidy. My mother made sure meals were always on time, seasonal celebrations were planned way in advance, and the house was festively decorated for each season long before Mother Nature executed her handiwork outside our home.
At Christmastime our house twinkled and glittered like a department store window display. Mom had her Christmas cards ready to mail by Halloween. (She even wrote a personal note in each one.) She called me her little piddle dinker and she said it with such affection I never really knew I had a domestic problem until I grew up and got married and she didn’t come with me.
As a result of my upbringing, I spent my first 34 years “trying” to be organized. I wanted to feel that peace and ease I felt in my childhood home. My mother made running a household look effortless and I wanted that too. But with every baby (I had three), I sank deeper and deeper into domestic quicksand. My very critical husband and I lived in a pig pen. To make matters worse, in my immaturity as a young wife and mother, I hadn’t realized the power I had as a creative, spontaneous child of God, and I often used my bed as a guilty recluse from the mess and cranky spouse. Avoidance does not help tidy the house.
I was a deficiency expert, a master at finding substitutions to “make do.” We drank out of jelly jars when all the glasses were dirty. When my husband needed a clean, white shirt for work every day, I usually ironed just the front, apologizing, “Sorry, just keep your jacket on and no one will know,” as he’d scowl and fuss out the door. I’d take the kids to school because they’d miss the bus and I often rolled my pajama bottoms up above my knees and wore a long coat to cover up the fact I hadn’t gotten dressed. We were always eating over the sink, sleeping in our clothes, and regularly using candlelight when the electric company turned off the juice. Anything that could get backed-up did: dishes, laundry, bills, garbage, toilets, and gutters and such. We were always working with deficits.
I didn’t want to live that way, but I clearly wasn’t prepared for the real world of home management, even though I took Home Economics in high school. Today, there is no such class in high schools. They don’t teach the real-world issues involved in home management. If they did, nobody would ever get married. After twelve years of struggling, crying, making excuses and apologizing, I lost my spark and fell into a deep depression. My critical husband called me useless, lazy, and dirty, and I agreed. I was a slob. I was very unhappy in my marriage as we fought every day over the mess. There I was, a full-time homemaker and I felt like a miserable failure. I wanted to be like Mom. Why wasn’t I more like her? How did she do it?
To Be Continued…..