Confessions of a sloppy House Frau

Bless Jan's heart. Here I go ripping off yet another one of her ideas. I have told her and I mean it in all honesty that she is my muse.


I believe I have hinted in previous posts, and on comments left on other's blogs that I am

A. Disorganized

B. Messy

C. Scatterbrained

D.Somewhat Irresponsible

Now don't worry, I'm not beating up on myself. Don't worry that I have low self esteem and I need to be nicer to myself. I'm just being perfectly honest. You see I have a lot of really good characteristics as well. And I also am of the opinion that A B C & D, are not actually character flaws, as some people might think. No, I just think of them as a part of my personality that together with more positive traits, make me the unique individual that I am. Just like all of your traits make you unique.

Over the years I have managed to become less irresponsible.

I have worked on this. It's pretty hard to keep a family of seven functioning properly if Mom isn't giving her all to the home team.

Now what is bringing on all this self contemplation you might wonder? I will tell you.

The Today Show.

I bet there are some of you out there thinking, why on earth doesn't Susan stop watching the Today Show already. She is always reacting to one thing or the other on that show. Yes, yes, that is true. I guess that Meredith, Anne, Natalie, Matt and my personal favorite Al, have just become so comfortable with me that I just can't turn them off.

Oh I would have such guilt issues.

But not to worry my interest in the Today Show today is entirely of a "How about that" nature. Today, on Today, they had one of their little segments. I think this one fell under the "your health" umbrella, but it could have been more of the "scientific discovery" category.

I wasn't paying that close of attention to it.

But this, THIS, definately caught my attention. It seems that some Biologist has found a new gene that is sometimes found in the human make-up. Hold onto your hats. This new gene that has recently been discovered is the LAZY GENE!

That's right LAZY.

First of all, I would like to meet the scientist who came up with the idea to go poking around in some mice's insides to look for a reason for laziness. It was noted that mice with the lazy gene were mostly inactive. They, as well as the un-lazy gened mice, had little treadmills put in their cages to see how active each mouse would be.

Did you get that??? Treadmills? For Mice???

It was also documented that the non lazy mice actually used their little mouse sized treadmills for exercise. Some of them worked on those treadmills for up to seven hours a day! Seven hours !! They must have taken their little mousey TV's away to get them that interested in those treadmills. Oh yeah and what did the unfortunate mice with the lazy gene do with their treadmills? Well they mostly put a lot of shavings on them and turned them into BEDS!!!

Intriguing, NO???

I certainly thought so.

Now all this talk of mice and lazy genes got me to thinking. Is it possible, just possible that I carry the LAZY gene ?

I am seriously considering this. Is that why I am disorganized, scatterbrained, messy and somewhat irresponsible???

The thing is, I'm not sure whether that would be a good thing or bad. On the one hand it would be nice and comforting to think that some of my slightly negative traits are through no fault of my own. On the other hand, it would be kinda depressing to think that some of my slightly negative traits are through no fault of my own.

How would you deal with that kind of knowledge?

Well let me see. I have the lazy gene. I am meant to have an unorganized messy house. I am meant to forget all about agreements to be available to babysit when Donald or Lisa bring over granddaughters. I am meant to let everyone fix their own dinner, because I have been writing on my blog instead of thinking about dinner. You see? This could either be the greatest excuse in the world, or I could just feel tremendous guilt for not trying harder to overcome my natural laziness.

So many possibilities. My head is spinning.

I decided to take stock of a few things.

My house is usually fairly tidy. And by that I mean that my living room (where people other than family usually sit to visit) is generally picked up and quite tidy. Also the guest bathroom. I try to keep it at least minimally clean.

The rest of the house though, can be pretty, uuuh, lived in ?

Lately we have all been trying harder to keep the kitchen clean. And my dining room too. That's a pretty easy one, just have to gather up the newspapers every three or four days off the dining table and get rid of them. Now I do know what a disorganized MESS my sewing room is. I think it is the greatest example in my whole house of how my mind works. So I refuse to apologize for it, I actually kinda like it that way. But to be polite I do often shut the door. It's for Don's peace of mind mostly.

Don by the way has a busy gene. He is always working on something. He is wonderful at cleaning the house when it just gets away from me and I am truly too overwhelmed. He is wonderful that way. He can take a job that I would spend most the day on and he will have it all sparkling in an hour or less.

What can I say, I'm a lucky goil.

So let me see? I've covered the Living room, my Dining room, the Guest Bathroom, explained my sewing room, hmmm, what does that leave? Oh yeah, my Bedroom. Now if my sewing room shows my mind, I guess I would have to say that my bedroom shows my psyche. I have partly made attempts to decorate it, (something that I am pretty capable of) but then I don't make much of an attempt to keep it clean. What does that say about me I wonder?

Here, I will offer an example.



My bedroom seems to accumulate too many clothes. Dirty, clean, waiting to be put away, waiting to be washed. I don't like it to be this way, in fact I hate it. Don, just this weekend, decided that enough was enough and got busy and picked it all up. We also filled up a bag with clothes I no longer want. A lot of them are too big for me because I have lost some weight you see. This is good this is what I like, a tidy bedroom. And every time we get it cleaned up I promise Don and myself that this time, THIS TIME, it will stay picked up. Sometimes I keep that promise for quite a while, like say, three weeks or maybe even a month. And then there are times like now, when I have just dumped two loads of laundry on my bed and haven't yet taken the time to hang them up and put them in my dresser.

That's why I say I am stealing Jan's material. She did a post today about stashing clothes in the bath tub. I thought that was pretty clever. I hardly every do anything like that. I guess it never has occurred to me to try to hide a mess, I just figure if it's a mess then it's a mess and you just deal with it.

There is one exception however.

About the only time I ever do a quick stashing is when the cable repair guy comes. I don't know why exactly, but for some reason I don't want to be standing there with the Cable Guy in my room and have all those clothes on the floor. So I gather them all up and shove them in my closet and then shut the door. As far as Cable Guy will ever know I have a nice neat bedroom. The big question here of course is,

Why on earth do I feel the need to impress the cable guy????

I probably haven't given this the attention I should.

I think it has something to do with the weirdness of a strange guy standing there in a uniform (well if a khaki pair of pants and a khaki shirt, along with a tool belt filled with cable repair stuff, constitutes a uniform.) In your bedroom. Just you and him. As you try to explain all about the stupid and weird things your DVR box is doing. Face it. This is probably the most intimate moment with a man, who is not your husband, standing there together in your bedroom, that you are ever going to face.

It really can be awkward. Do I just stand next to him? Will that seem like I am trying to get his attention? Do I just go sit on the bed while he goes about his work? Which is the least provocative anyway? Standing there watching as he does his cable repair thing, or daintily perched there on the bed acting like being in your bedroom with a strange man is something you deal with on a daily basis.

It is one of those social moments that they just don't cover in The Ladies Home Journal.

And I feel that if a bunch of clothes are laying around on the bed or the floor, even sometimes a bra or (gulp) a pair of panties it could make an uncomfortable situation even more difficult. So yes Jan, I guess sometimes I do stash. I'm not proud of it, but in this case I have to think of it as the lesser of two evils.

And to be perfectly honest I must admit that there is little chance this will ever change. Especially if I have been gifted with that stupid lazy gene. And also as long as I am, disorganized, messy, scatterbrained and somewhat irresponsible.