it's not fair.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I love to organize, I love to repaint, and I love to move furniture around.

But anyone who comes into my home on a regular basis or has known me since Jr. High School can tell you that I am not a house (or room) cleaning machine.

I don't like cleaning and I don't like tidying.

I have been like this as long as I can remember. My room in high school would drive my dad crazy. I loved to make collages and you could guarantee that at least once a week you would hear my dad say: “pick up all these bits” and he always used to emphasize the bits in this crazy-I-can’t-understand-how-you-can-live-like-this kind of way.

One summer at camp after I had been there for a week my friend Laura came into my room and her comment was: “you’re a messy bugger, aren’t you?”

And it’s true, I can certainly make a mess better, easier and faster than most. Even my husband has watched in awe (and little bit of horror, I’m sure) as I have opened something new and the proceeded to throw the plastic wrap or box on the floor and walk away. (Am I five? No wait, we will teach our five year old not to do that.)

Now to be clear, it’s not like my home is like an episode of hoarders or anything, I do clean up if something spills, there aren’t dishes all around. I have always liked to say: “I am messy, but I’m not dirty”.

However, more recently, with a baby crawling around, I’ve started to realize that maybe this house is a little bit dirtier than I thought.

With a cat around, Isla often has fur coated hands, could this be avoided by more sweeping and mopping? I have more likely chalked it up to Olivia shedding so much.

Could our kitchen look tidier if we washed a few dishes a day? I have more likely looked at the problem as more the fact that we should find a place with a dishwasher.

Would my desk be easier to work on if I put things away instead of just piling more things on top? I have convinced myself that I prefer the kitchen table.

And would it be much easier to get dressed in the morning and make our bedroom seem more calm and peaceful, if there wasn’t a clothes carpet*? Maybe I like a clothes carpet.

I can’t say that this is all me, Thom definitely contributes, but I think that it is more me causing him to give up. Oh boo.

So what is up with all this?

I think that I may have figured out some part of it.

Yesterday I was hanging out with Maryann and Melissa, my friends who are sisters. (or sisters who are my friends?) Melissa was visiting Maryann with her husband and her kids Cole and Amelia. Cole is about 2 and half years old. And Melissa made a comment that he doesn’t understand what fair means. When you tell him to stop doing something dangerous, or when he needs to come inside now, or share that toy, he says: “it’s not fair”. Melissa commented that really it is fair, it’s just not fun.

When I got home I was looking at our house and thought: “it’s not fair, I don’t want to have to clean up”.

Oh.

It’s fair, it’s just not fun.

*clothes carpet: a term that I have coined about the layer of clothes that I walk on to get to my bed... shaking my head in disgrace.