Tuesday, April 13, 2010

SHE SHALL LEAVE MESSES WHEREVER SHE GOES

Traditional:

"Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross" nursery rhyme
Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross
To see a fine lady upon a white horse
With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes
She shall have music wherever she goes
Updated for the sake of personal relevance:

"Drive a Fast Car to Northern NV" revised nursery rhyme
Drive a fast car to northern NV
To meet a spent drug rep upon a great spree
With a schedule to keep and plenty of clothes
She shall leave messes wherever she goes
I seem to think that I am am too important and busy to be bothered with picking up after myself. Those few seconds it takes to hang up a dress I just tried on must be so vital to my professional success that I simply cannot waste them on the menial. That must be it.

Thing is, I'm a tidy person. I like things organized. Everything really does have a place even if only in my head. But I get busy, and when I get busy I get scatterbrained. The little messes throughout the house are remnants of recent events. (Apologies for the poor photo quality. I was just so busy being important that I couldn't be bothered to locate my camera for a proper snap.)


Did the voyeur in you just squeal with joy? An actual looksee in someone else's house! And not all clean and perfect either. Some people take great pleasure in photographing their über stylish home and posting the images on their blog for all to ogle and compliment. Me--I unveil my abode in a state of clutter. Just another example of my devotion to reality.

a • our bathroom. Morning prep paraphernalia scattered across counter. A cardigan from a week ago. Drug store buys from last week sitting on the floor. The drawers that the new razors, nail polish, tampons, etc. go in are immediately adjacent to where the CVS bag sits on the floor. Inches, I'm telling you. But I can't be bothered. (There's also a little love note my spouse wrote on the mirror using a dry erase marker. I'm leaving that up for a while.)

b • my office. A couple yoga tops scattered on the floor. Flats I didn't want to wear after I initially put them on. A box from Anthropologie the contents of which I'm as yet undecided on. Bag full of work clothes I changed out of before yoga. Boxes left over from a lunch I had catered last week. (If you ever need to have a lunch done, I strongly recommend Claim Jumper. Their service is terrific, you can call the morning of and they'll have your $400 worth of food ready for lunch, and they have the very best boxes for food transport. Sturdy, holes for handles, and simple to fold flat. It's really the boxes that keep me coming back.)

c • our room. Laundry on the floor from, oh, early last week. He does the washing and I'd be a swell gal to do the folding, but, uh, no. The bed has Cat's Hawaiian quilt on it--a very gracious and much-loved gift that has no business chillin' in our particular color scheme--and hasn't been made in, well, at least a week. It looks great when made. That doesn't seem to matter to busy, important me. Maids come tomorrow. They'll make it.

d • guest bedroom--a room that has absolutely no business being messed up. We haven't had guests recently. But last week I couldn't sleep and my tossing and turning was keeping The Husband awake, so I relegated myself to the guest room and watched Fame on his laptop. When I got up the next morning I didn't make the bed or tidy up my bits and pieces. Instead I just shut the door and walked away.

e • the loft. Husband and I watched Father Goose last night and rather than giving in to the incredible inconvenience of picking up the throw pillows and replacing them on the love seat and sliding the ottoman back to its chair and then walking ten feet to the blanket closet to deposit the crumpled mass of cloth on the floor, we just relocated to our unmade bed to go to sleep. We can't be bothered.

f • living/dining area. The carpets are dry, you know. The little white bits under the chairs and tables really don't need to be there. Had the carpets cleaned on Saturday. Miraculously, they dried the very same day! But three days later the little plastic pieces are still saving the carpet from the wicked dark wood, because removing them would involve five minutes(!) of my precious time.

g • the kitchen. Here you will find the dishes that The Husband washed on Sunday waiting to be put away. And waiting. And waiting. And a salad bowl from our Sunday dinner at my coworker's house that actually still has salad in it. Take the time to dump it out and rinse the bowl? You've got to be kidding me. Next to the bowl of rotting cucumbers and tomatoes, there's an open cookbook I was reading over breakfast, three days worth of mail, and a random bottle of air freshener.

h • la pièce de résistance: my closet, an archetypal Hell hole. It's here that I try on clothes and then unceremoniously toss them to the floor, knowing that they will get wrinkled and I, a girl that irons about once every six months, won't end up wearing them at all. I toss my shoes to the floor rather than slipping them in their nearby slot. And I don't take the plastic off of my dry cleaning until I actually want to wear what's underneath it.

Writing this all out makes me realize what a truly classy lady I am.

And if you're looking for a late-night treat, chew on the irony of my writing about my need to tidy instead of actually doing it. Tastes great and filling too.

8 comments:

Jessica said...

Living in a giant room has forced me to be tidy, 'cause if I leave a mess I can always see it.

One day I'll have a house like a big girl and I'll have plenty of places to leave messes. A girl can dream, right?

Sue said...

Where did I go wrong?

Renae said...

Here's my question, do you 'clean' before the Maids come?

Megan said...

Absolutely not. That's what I pay them for. I think it's pretty foolish to clean before your house cleaners do. What's the point then, you know?

Lindsay said...

It's so nice to hear from you more often on your blog. I feel like I get to see you and know what's going on with you guys. That's funny about the house cleaner because I have come to dislike Wednesday's because it is the day before our housecleaner comes and I feel like I have to have everything in its correct spot so she doesn't have to work harder. Wednesday's I dread - Thursday's I love!

Rabid said...

So... I'm not so much a squealing-fer-joy voyeur as I am happy to see that you are human. Whence I came to visit, I thought, "this place is abnormally tidy. If Megan shall visit my cluttered residence, I shall be forever embarrassed."

Of course, your so-called messes seem tidy in comparison to my current state of my affairs. What can I say? It's tax season and the Spouse is in surgery.

whitneyingram said...

I can see Gretchen sitting in the loft. Don't forget Gretchen.

Winder said...

The voyeur in me did squeal. He,he,he.