Inherent Tidiness

I struggle mightily with a dustcloth and cleaning products as you may have noticed in previous posts. So the scene I saw when I passed Jedd's room this weekend struck me as being very humorous.

I should back up over 11 years to minutes after the boy's birth. I looked at him for the first time and thought he looked just like a miniature version of my brother Chris. Both of my brothers are oddly tidy men and have been since boyhood. They shared a bedroom growing up and I have no recollection of that room ever being a mess. My room on the other hand, which I never shared, was always a wreck! I mean appalling. I'd be sent to clean it and would go up with every intention of doing so, but as soon as I saw a book anywhere, under the bed, in the closet, that I hadn't seen in a while, I was lost into it for hours. Nothing got done. Clothes were piled everywhere. I'd wake at night and know intellectually that that was not a giant grizzly bear sitting at my desk at one in the morning, but I'd bear it (no pun intended) for about 5 minutes, then count to ten and run down the hall to my mom's room where I'd fly through the air from her doorway to her bed, so the bed goblins couldn't get my feet and send her jolting awake by the bounce I made when I landed on her bed. She was usually a good sport about it I must say. I only stopped this ritual at the age of 12 1/2 when she re-married.

So back to this past weekend. Thom took the kids away for a retreat at a resort in Northeast Md for a night. I was blissfully alone in my house for the first time in about 20 years. I did nothing. I thought about calling girlfriends and organizing a night out, but then realized that I wanted to sit in peace in my house...and enjoy the solitude. It was really....good.

I watched a netflix movie which was very sweet and I highly recommend called, " Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont". It's about an elderly lonely woman (Joan Plowright) is befriended by a young writer (Rupert Friend) in London. I was sobbing at the end so have tissues at hand if you decide to watch it. I thought about watching it over again right away I enjoyed it so much; but then I thought "no, I can go read in bed as late as I'd like without guilt of keeping my hard-working, early-rising husband awake with the light." So that is what I did.

But when I went upstairs to read in bed I passed Jedd's bedroom. And this is what I saw....

He "made" his chair, as if it were a real bed, before he went away. His entire room was clean.

He has a very nice loft bed which sqeaks any time he moves. He slept in it for about a month and then took to sleeping in this chair and ottoman instead for the past 5 months or so. But usually he makes it a chair by day. Now, apparently he's decided to let the world know that it is now a bed. If anyone wants a relatively new loft bed and mattress I have one available.

I have never made the kids make their beds, ever. They know how to do it and if they want to they can. I do it when I change the sheets. Sometimes I get on a kick, especially if I have new sheets or pillows and make it every day for a few weeks. Otherwise one of us shakes out the blankets and spreads them into the air so they land nicely over the bed and we climb in. I love a freshly made bed, it's just not high on my daily priority list.

It's interesting to me mainly how Jedd is a tidy little creature, (mainly in his own room it doesn't seem to spill over into public areas) just like my brothers. Thom isn't. It isn't natural to my daughters, though they both seem more organized in their chaos than I was or am.

My sister shares in my cleaning disability. We both try very hard to keep our homes clean and they are relatively so. Don't be afraid to come eat here. We vaccuum and wash floors and toilets and counters. It just doesn't come natural to us. But the homes we grew up in were always clean. My mother has the gift of keeping a clean house and I don't ever remember seeing her do it. I can't remember seeing her clean a toilet or a floor once in my whole life but it was always done. Our home was aways beautifully decorated and clean enough for a magazine to show up and do a photo-op at any time. I don't remember dust bunnies in any room but my own. I'm going to have to ponder this more... I'm intrigued by how this was accomplished....