A brief side trip....

Okay, I know I am in the middle of a series right now, but sometimes there is the blog I am "supposed" to write and there is the blog I "have" to write. If I ignore the blog that is a have to it blocks up the works and I can't get out the supposed to. So...this is the blog that has been gumming up the works for the last week or so.

Today I cleaned house. Top to bottom. Mopped the floors, dusted, scrubbed the bathrooms, did all the laundry. Big time clean. Now I clean house probably more than most. I keep a tidy place. Not as clean as Brent would like it, not as messy as I would be comfortable with, but clean. I have been told my messy house is everyone else's clean house. I knew this big all at once cleaning was coming, and it would have been worse if I had done it when we first got home from New Mexico, but continuing education requirements kept me busy long enough for the most neurotic of it to pass. So here we go...background time (it's your favorite part right?)....

I am not sure how far back this goes, you don't notice as much when you are little, it's not until you are older that it starts to seep in that things are maybe not this way in everyone's house. Our house was never clean. Or I guess I should say it was never neat. I know it was clean because it was my job to clean it. So I would dust, and vacuum and take things to people's rooms where they belonged, take out the trash, do the dishes, do the laundry...all of the things needed to keep a house clean. So underlying everything it was clean. But it was never neat. No sooner would I gather up a pile of stuff and put it in the respective bedroom than it would be back out in the main living area. Eventually you just give up. I would stack things into neatish piles and move them around to dust. Pick things up to vacuum and then put them back. Move the tons of knick knacks from the shelves, clean then put them all back.

It was just too much stuff. Add to that two dogs, a bird, a cat and fish. Plus anywhere from 4 people at the lowest to 8 at the highest all living in a 14' x 70' trailer and you can see where this is going. At its best it would have been cluttered. Just a small space with too many people and pets. But this isn't at its best. This is beyond that.

My dad doesn't throw anything away. Broken things can be fixed or salvaged for parts. My mom collects things. Anything and everything. Someday it's "going to be worth something". And she rotates through collections every few years, hummingbirds, owls, Precious Moments figurines, Noah's Ark themed items, anything QVC sells and on and on. And all of this stuff is out on display, or stacked in boxes in corners. Junk drawers are crammed so full of stuff you can't get them open. Garages never hold cars, they hold more stuff. The house my parents live in now is much bigger than the trailer we lived in when I was a teenager, but they just have filled it with more stuff.

Now coming from the other side was Brent and his family. There were RULES about cleaning. Dirty dishes were rinsed and put on the counter next to the sink, never left in the sink dirty or soaking. When there were "enough" dishes to wash you washed them and put them in the rack to dry. But not over night. They had to be put away. Clothes were never left in the dryer, once dried they must be removed immediately and put away. Beds were made daily. It was a very very neat house. The opposite of how I grew up.

When we got married we just didn't have a lot of stuff to clutter up a place with. I have talked about how we only had enough furniture for one room. We didn't get prints for the walls until we had been married for a few years. We had a ferret but just the one pet and she was small so didn't take up much space. Since there were only two of us, and we both worked a lot of hours the house wasn't really too hard to keep clean. A couple hours here and there and it was tidy and neat. And when Brent was out to sea it was even easier. Dishes each day took about 5 minutes to wash. Even though he was gone I still slept on the same side of the bed so it took about 15 seconds to make in the morning. The house was always clean. And I got used to it being the new normal.

Even after Christopher was born I kept the house pretty darn tidy. Of course our version of tidy changed. Anyone with little ones knows that the living room becomes a repository for toys, but they were kept neat as possible. It was added to the routine, after C went down for the night the toys were put away and the living room straightened up for the next day.

Then Brent got out of the Navy and we spent awhile living with my parents while we saved for our first house. I will always be grateful for them opening their home to us, but it was a really difficult stretch. Part of it was due to the house itself. I went back to work before Brent got on with Intel, so he stayed home with Christopher and tried keeping my parent's house in a way that would make us both comfortable. He soon reached the same conclusion I had years before. It was just impossible. Not growing up around it, it was worse for him. He just couldn't stand the clutter. Thankfully we found a house we could afford pretty quickly and moved into our own place.

So we have reached a pretty comfortable balance. I do tend to end up with a small pile of things I am working on right at that moment. Anyone who ever saw my desk when I had a desk job will let you know that I did not keep a neat desk. It was all stacks of stuff I was working on. Nothing got filed until I was finished with it. I am completely an out of site out of mind type of person. Drives Brent crazy. He will tell me if it's important I will remember it...well no, I won't. I am multi-focused at times (my more flattering way of saying easily distracted) and I often forget things that are VERY important to me, so I keep things out that I don't want to miss. Brent is a everything put away type guy, so we balance. I have a basket and a shelf that I keep a stack of things on. Everything else is put away. Still very neat, even in my messiest. Not as messy as I am in his most disorganized. But a good balance.

Then we go home. I am physically uncomfortable in my parent's house now. It's just gotten worse over the years. There are currently six people, two dogs, two cats and a bird in the house. The garage is packed full of things. I almost took a picture of what should be the dining room, or study depending on how you use it, but I wouldn't have been able to explain to them why I was doing it. "A reminder to NEVER live like this" just seems harsh to say. But it was packed. Stacks of stuff. Paper, boxes, old magazines, just stuff. So much stuff. The kitchen table couldn't have been used to eat off of without a few hours head start. And without someone in the house who is as dedicated to keeping it clean as I was growing up, and as Brent and I were when we lived there, it's not clean anymore under the clutter. Pet hair, dust, just not clean. We aren't talking Hoarders level, but Clean House for sure. I just want to call Niecy Nash and have her fix it all. But I know that it wouldn't stay that way. And I know it doesn't bother them. So it shouldn't bother me.

But it does. Every time we go back to New Mexico when we come home I clean. Or I guess I should say I CLEAN. I toss things out, I give things to Goodwill, I scrub, I scour. I clean. If I had gone at the house right when we got back I would have been digging through boxes in the garage sending things away. And I probably will anyway. But I will wait for the neurotic feelings to pass so I can do it with a clear head. I have, in the past, gotten rid of things I regretted later. I didn't realize at the time how it was tied to my parent's house and how I grew up. Now I do. So now I wait. I wait to make sure if I am getting rid of things it's because I don't want them, not because I am afraid to keep them.