Cure OCD? Have kids.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 4:13PM My father showed up at the house this morning when I was on my walk home from the coffee shop. Which means, my hair was mashed from a restless night of tosses and turns, my breath smelled funky, and my clothes were wrinkled under a thick coating of dog hair. On account of wearing them since Sunday night.
My Dad was there to help me so I thought it best not to point out that he promised to call first.
I knew that when he followed me in the front door, we'd find a maelstrom of crusty cereal bowls, naked children, sticky hands and other pleasant things.
While he futzed with his motorcycle, I ran ahead in a frantic, utterly pointless attempt to tidy up. The clean-up effort started - and ended - when I kicked a rumpled T-shirt beneath the couch. Because really, what's the point? I can give the dog a Peppermint patty, but it doesn't change the fact that her breath still smells like hot, rotting garbage.
This is my home. The wood floors feel a bit pasty in places, gummed up by errant risotto, jam splotches and, I don't know, accidental piss puddles. Most of the white door frames are muddied by dirty fingerprints from the door knobs down. Buttons are popped off couch cushions and a vague hint of shit fills the house most days.
This is how far I've fallen.
Once upon a time, I kept an immaculate house. Then we got a dog, a very cute white and brown spotted animal who sheds the equivalent of three "Mop Dogs" per week. I let my standards slip ever so slightly (my mother bought me packets of lint rollers to pull me back from the abyss) but I managed to keep the house well-groomed.
After the first child was born, colorful (UGLY!) toys came to live with us. The second and third babies came as a pair and I coveted sleep more than cleanliness. But I still maintained some sense that Kent and I lived as civilized adults in creative, uncluttered, well-appointed surroundings.
We bought a white sofa and a white dining room table. We lived dangerously, man!
Two years ago, Tobias pushed the family to six and kicked my OCD on its ass. I don't have the energy. I don't have the time. I don't have the fight left in me.
Which brings us to yesterday, and the new art installation at our house. It's called "Black Sharpie Meets White Dining Room Table."
I took one look at the permanent scrawls, clutched my hands to my face, threw my head back and screamed to the heavens. Like a wild animal about to devour its young. My tribe scattered to their rooms, and left me alone to scrub "Goof Off" and mumble obscenities.
The marks remain. The house still looks like six people live here, including three who can't wash their hands or wipe their bottoms properly. I'm not gonna tell you I've found Zen with the mess because I haven't... and likely never will.
I'm just going to try not to obsess over it.
Reader Comments (6)
I totally relate. I grew up in chaos so order and neatness have always been paramount to me. I remember visiting my brother when he was still single. Still a bachelor, and his lack of filth and mess was truly disappointing!
One time I had to get something from underneath his kitchen sink and it was then that I realized the damage which had been inflicted upon us as children. All his paper bags were neatly folded and filed under the sink like books on a shelf.
Someday, we'll have neat and orderly homes again. Until then, I just take deep breaths and try not to use anymore of my peripheral vision than is required when I walk through a room. Unless of course the room is so cluttered that I need to pay close attention to the floor as to not trip and break a vertabre.
BTW the chaos in our house growing up was INSANE. Not just the run of the mill chaos we enjoy!
The blocking peripheral vision trick: I SO employ that one at least fifty times a day.
Gawd, I can relate!!!
"I'm just going to try not to obsess over it." Indeed.
I can relate and I only have 1 child!
My daughter has marked our white kitchen table with both sharpies and paint pens - isopropyl alcohol got it out... worth a try! I also use this in laundry quite often. I don't really miss my old career as a bench biologist, but I liked having stuff like chloroform and 100% ethanol to get stains out with. Another good one on the homefront is cheap vodka.
Good luck. I assume I'll return to my neatnik ways sometime in the not-too-distant future (once my 4-year-old learns to eat without broadcasting food all over the room!)
Hmmm, 100% alcohol? Sounds like you need to buy a fifth of Everclear, Dana! Make one set of Jell-O shots and clean with the rest of it.
I'm going to have to take you at your word when you say you've let your standards slide. Your attention to the details is so legendary it's actually come up in quarrels around here. Dawson's all like, "So howcome Dana can...oh, forget it mumble mumble."
Me: "Howcome Dana can WHAT?"
"Nothing. NEVERMIND."
"Nevermind WHAT?"
"Nothing. Just, why is it I'm gone for a few hours and come home and find toys scattered in every room of the house?"
Because kids DO that. Little does he realize I've picked up three times over during those few hours. And yet....
I really hope your table and sofa come clean. It's not such a big deal, the mess, until your personal property gets damaged. Then it's, well, personal.
- L
First: you held things together until baby #4 arrived? You're amazing.
I grew up with a compulsive hoarder for a mother. The house was so cluttered, one couldn't even think. It was horrible. So, my home now is untidy, but it is an ocean of space and organisation compared to how I grew up. I strive to be tidy-ish, but I do like homes that look lived in. If we go visiting I tell my friends, very sternly, "NEVER tidy up for us."
Esme's best friend from nursery has an OCD neat/tidy mother, and an immaculate home that I find bleakly depressing. When they come over here, I spend a stressed-out three days beforehand wiping black sticky marks off walls and chipping food off the furniture. And I wonder why I feel I have to bring my house "up" to their standards ... they never mess theirs up for us when we go over there.