when will I grow up?

I've never been much of a housekeeper.  At home I'm unorganized and messy.  At work I'm super organized and efficient, but somehow I can't seem to translate those skills into the home setting.  I thought once upon a time that maybe when I got married I'd turn into Martha Stewart and my home would be a thing of beauty that people would love to visit and even have a place to sit down that wasn't covered in clean laundry and unopened mail.  The reality was that I married a man less organized in the home than I, resulting in an extra person's clean laundry and unopened mail, not to mention dishes, shoes, and things he pulls out of his pockets at the end of the day.  (Why is there so much in there?  The crumpled receipts, pens and scrap paper should be at the bottom of a bag/purse where they belong.)

Next I thought that perhaps having a child will force me to keep a more organized house and do laundry more than every other week.  Bringing home a baby caused a lot of changes, but I'm here to tell you housekeeping wasn't one of them.  I do more laundry because baby pukes a lot and those cute Bumgeniuses don't keep EVERYTHING in all the time (nor do Pampers, but they are a little better).  The result of Teddy being here is that I wash a lot of bottles and do a lot of baby laundry, but I still consider it a major accomplishment if all the adult laundry in the house is washed and dried and PUT AWAY.  The fact that I consider this a such major accomplishment serves to show how rarely each of those caveats is met.  I can wash laundry.  I can dry it.  The hang up is getting it from the dryer to the drawers and closets.

In addition to laundry there is so much clutter.  I blame the US postal service and the invention of online bill pay.  Because I pay everything online, I have no impetus to open and dispose of the mail.  It piles up and creates the clutter.  The piles get bigger and get shoved somewhere without being opened.  If you add all this mail to the regular clutter generated by a family and no one actually cleans it up, it increases at an alarming rate.

I haven't even touched on the kitchen.  I have forced myself to be cleaner in the kitchen because I hate cooking in a dirty kitchen and cooking in some form or fashion must be performed daily.  (Microwaving Ramen, Lean Cuisine or Chef Boyardee counts as cooking in a pinch.)   The dishes get washed on a regular basis even if the kitchen isn't completely pristine before bedtime every night.   It's just such a cycle.  If the environment and money wasn't a consideration, I'd be all for paper/plastic ware for everything possible.

In summation, I don't know when I'll ever be a good housekeeper.  It may never happen.  However, the final load of adult laundry is in a pile on the bed just waiting for me to put it away.  I will have done it.  I will be accomplished in something.  But I sit here writing about it instead of actually doing
it.  And Facebook hasn't been checked in at least thirty minutes...

**Aside:  This has no reflection on my upbringing as I was forced to keep a clean room and do chores while I was growing up.  Maybe this is my fifteen year rebellion against that...