riding waves

There are some days, okay most days, where I've got me, my mood, and lots of my opinions. If I'm lucky enough to have energy too, those days I write. Other days, though, I've got me, and that's about it. My mood, even my opinions seem to be prey to any old influence that comes along. Maybe I'm too tired to exert my own influence, or maybe I'm just all mixed up with too many conflicting patterns inside. I'm not sure. Today is one of those days, though.

I usually don't write on those days because I prefer things to have a point, a decipherable theme at the end to wrap it all up. I like to follow my standard struggle - discover - conquer format that seems to permeate any personal post that I do. Today, I'm sitting in front of a brand new laptop with an empty house & a fresh iTunes loaded with only the music of the latest appeal, and it seems like wasted time not to write. Plus, I'm looking at a whole house full of c-r-a-p (and I mean, FULL of it, as in, if the realtor called us today asking for a showing, I'd have to deny it). I'd choose this over cleaning the house any day.

Perhaps that should be my theme for today -- messies versus the organized. I was thinking about it this morning as I was driving around gathering cash for my impending laptop purchase. I was supposed to pick someone up to help me decide if the MacBook was a good deal or not, and I realized after I got in the car that the poor guy would need somewhere to put his feet. My car is a perpetual pit of junk, but lately, it's been swinging more to the digusting side. Where even I am embarrassed to ride in it, let alone let anyone else in.

As I drove around, I picked up endless coffee cups, plastic cups, papers, straws, off the passenger side floor each time I came to a stoplight. And it started me thinking about the drive to keep a cleaner personal environment.

When I got married, I remember having many arguments over the state of the house. Apparently, when I quit my job to get health insurance through the state, I was drafted into the job of sole housecleaner. Problem is, I'm a terrible housecleaner. I'm about as good at that job as good old Georgie W. would be at the job of "speech writer." I tried. Really. But I was on a very steep learning curve.

Then Sassy came along & all our lofty expectations of maintaining a clean house were gone. We were lucky to be able to sleep. We both fell into our old patterns of letting clutter overtake every room & then madly cleaning before anyone said they wanted to come over. And shutting our bedroom doors when we had company of course, lest they see the piles upon piles of clothes all over the floor.

As Sassy grew, so did her ability to get into things. That's when the cleaner house kind of happened to us. Things had to be put up, since being put up was safer than being put into her mouth. That meant our floors quit being the dumping grounds for things. Instead, our counters and tables and furniture tops were piled high with discarded items that belonged somewhere else, just not there.

Meanwhile, I learned that how well I keep my home is another great way to judge myself as a wife and mother! How exciting! I needed more to judge myself with, so this was great!

I spent a good two years fretting over hotspots and visiting FlyLady and thinking about organizational techniques and cleaning routines and products that were chemically safe but made my cleaning easier. This all came to a head when we listed our house for sale. I had become like a marine corporal, barking orders at my family. Pick that up! Do NOT leave your things lying around! Take off your shoes! Remember: when you leave the room, it must look like you were never there!!!

We got the house in picture-perfect, show-ready condition and then we flew away to Arizona to recoup. And when I look back on our vacation, the best part of it all wasn't the trips into the desert, or the on-site swimming pool, the hot sun, or even the multiple not-yet-picked-over thrift stores. It was the messy apartment. The glorious, wonderful, clothes all over the floor, kitchen piled high with dirty dishes, bed unmade every day, wet swimsuits lining the tub, relaxing messy apartment. I could feel myself breathe easier each time I stepped over a big pile of dirty clothes & didn't stop to pick them up. When I think back on our time in the messy apartment, I feel...comfort. That cluttery apartment was like a great big hug, which I desperately needed at the time.

I also was able to reconnect spiritually on that vacation. I wrote 3 blog posts, though I believe I only posted one. My mind wandered freely with nary a thought to the state of my surroundings. I had the freedom to make connections and follow them, to decipher the input of the past couple months and the new input coming from the hot sun and the mountains. Just thinking back on it now makes me breathe more deeply.

Then, our week was up & we headed home. The dread set in during our flight and just increased the closer we got to home. I walked into our very, very clean, picture-perfect, show-ready house and wanted to cry. We put our suitcases in the basement. We found something to eat and then made it look like we were never there. For the next 3 weeks, I kept the house up in this way. I was always ready for that phone call from the realty office, to "confirm a showing." I always had one foot out the door and the other in constant cleaning mode.

I also fantasized about suicide almost every day. I imagined different ways I could kill myself: hang myself from the ceiling fan, bury myself in the backyard under the pine trees, drive myself over a cliff. I couldn't stop crying. I couldn't stop wanting to die.

What I wanted was an escape. Obviously, I didn't want to die. But I felt like I had no home. I felt like I was living in someone else's home. I longed for that messy apartment in Arizona. One night I sat in the living room, sobbing after Sassy had fallen asleep, and then it struck me. "F--- it." And I started to laugh. If God intervenes in our lives, he intervened in mine right there. How the light switch can flip from sobbing in desperation to laughing out loud in a manner of seconds is either insanity or a higher power. I'm going with God on this one.

And thank God that it happened! I don't know how chronically depressed people keep going. A "f--- it" attitude has always served me well in the past & it did yet again. Our house started getting messier & messier, little by little. Soon, it actually felt like our house again. And soon after that, it felt like a burden again. Only this time it was the burden of getting ourselves ready for a spur-of-the-moment showing that might or might not happen. The actual mess itself was comforting, like an old friend.

As I drove around hastily making my car suitable for a passenger this morning, I was thinking about what I've learned about my messy habits in the past few years.

Well, I realized that regardless of who we might want to be at different times in our lives, Jeff, Sassy, and myself are all a bunch of "messies." Every single one of us likes to act like it's the others that make the bulk of the mess, but the truth is, none of us are clean people. When we use the phone book in the study, we don't put it back in its kitchen drawer when we're done -- ever. Our coffee cups sit exactly where we set them down last time we were using them. Our dirty clothes lie in piles on the floor when we take them off. And the truth of it is, that's the way I like it. I like the bed unmade, the coffee cups all over the computer desk, and the backed-up laundry waiting to be washed. I much prefer it to the starkly clean home I was trying to keep up with a few weeks ago.

I also realized that while most cleaner folks theorize that the only way to achieve a higher spirituality or a clarity of thinking is to maintain a home free of clutter and messiness, I don't think that's the case for everyone. At least, I don't think it's the case for me. I am at my most creative in a messy environment. Honestly, when my environment is too clean, my creativity declines because I'm reticent to do anything to mess up my environment. I have my limits, for sure. Actual dirt, dust or dog hair weighs on me pretty quickly. Clutter takes about 4 or 5 days to press my buttons & then I want a clean sweep so we can start over. But there are two modes for me: "cleaning mode" and "living mode." The two modes are never operating simultaneously. And I simply cannot let my mind wander enough to be creative when I'm in "cleaning mode."

Some of the most creative people I know are also more comfortable in messy environments. And I'm beginning to see that for some of us, a messy home doesn't provide mental clarity. For some of us, a clean home gets us all muddled up mentally with mundane tasks and crushing responsibility, leaving no room for Big Ideas. A messy home, on the other hand, gives us the mental room we need to think those Big Ideas and then the freedom to get ourselves knee-deep in the messy processes to bring those Big Ideas to fruition. And if that's what my family needs in order to create, then maybe the messy house/clean sweep/messy house/clean sweep pattern is something I might choose to live with, good mothering be damned.