I Live In Controlled Chaos

There are eight people who live in my house. Myself, my husband, my eldest Bonus Son, my Extreme Teen from He---- I mean, my other Bonus Son, and my four biological spawn.

We have two bathrooms and three bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, a teeny laundry room, and a hallway.

I have managed to successfully retrieve all of my books from storage, and they happily reside here, too. I have hundreds of books, just in case you wondered.

My house is in a constant, perpetual state of unclean. Not dirty (ok, mostly not dirty, but there are days when yeah, it’s a leeeeettle dirty), but unclean. Not like the whole “this house is unholy!” unclean, but cluttered. Lots of clutter. Way too much clutter.

For one, myself, my spawn, and my Extreme Teen are all packrats. I have over the years managed to improve my packratted’ness, meaning I actually throw away receipts now instead of keeping them for months and months, for one thing.

Two, even if we didn’t have minor issues with being packrats, we have a lot of freaking crap stuff. Books aside (and even my kids have a lot of books), we have a ton of clothes, dishes, toys, notebooks, knick-knacks, utensils, DVDs, video games, shoes, D&D paraphernalia, and other… stuff… that I can’t think of right now.

Three, cleaning is done sporadically. I mean, I do all the dirty stuff, like dishes and mopping and wiping and dusting (ok, dusting is sporadic, it is, I admit it), and my spawn do their bathroom and bedrooms (um, their bedrooms are in a perpetual state of disarray), and the Extreme Teen does… nothing… and thus the clutter is never de-cluttered. And if that wasn’t a run-on sentence, I don’t know what is.

Four, I have no natural clean-gene. I have given this much thought, and I truly do believe that there are just some people who are just made that way. It’s coded into their DNA or something. They are biologically neat freaks. I just don’t have that genetic desire to make my living space spotless. As cool as that would be if I did, I don’t. That’s my theory and I’m stickin’ to it.

And five… wait. I had a five, I did, but I got distracted with all the science talk and… oh yeah. I get distracted easily. I mean, I start to clean something, and usually wind up having to into another part of my home for one reason or another, and finding something wherever I went that needs doing, and instead of finishing job one, I start another one. Before I know it, I’ve got three or five cleaning jobs happening, and then I get overwhelmed and frustrated and quit. I figure half cleaned is better than no-cleaned and call it good.

And then six, I’m kinda lazy. I would rather read or dick around on the computer or watch BSG than clean. I hate going through things with the sole purpose of “straightening it up” because that’s. so. BORING. So I find reasons NOT to do it, and that reason can be as simple as “it’s Tuesday” and voila, no cleaning for me!

So my house is in a perpetual state of chaos, but I don’t worry (and neither should you) because I know right where everything is, and if I don’t know, I will know, once I find it.