Confessions from the Organizationally Challenged

Hello, my name is Cinthia, and I’m a Messy. But inside of me is a Neatnik dying to get out (she’s squeezed in there along side the Skinny Girl).

Life is not easy for a packrat with messy tendencies and given that my chosen hobbies encourage pack-ratting, this makes life even more difficult.

Add to that that I live in a house (with three other people who are also packrats) with virtually NO closet space and it’s a recipe for domestic disaster.

At work, I have no problems being a Neatnik. In fact, I’m organized to the point of borderline OCD. Everything must be in its proper place and done a certain way or I completely wig out. As much as I crave vacation time, I cringe at the thought of someone else taking over because I know I’ll have to come back and spend weeks reorganizing and “fixing” their foul-ups.

At home, however, I’m a totally different person. I wade through a sea of clutter on a daily basis and hardly give it a thought, simply because there’s nowhere else to put it.

Where does one store an inflatable mattress when one doesn’t have a utility closet? Where does one put small kitchen appliances when all available cupboard space is taken up with dishes, pots and pans? What about all those little things that come into the house that are necessary but don’t always have a place (as in a place for everything and everything in its place) These are questions that kept me awake at night for years until I simply gave up.

Put them in the garage, you say? I’d love to….but Undeserving Relative has taken over the garage with large power tools, mysterious boxes of UR’s own “stuff”, as well as the accumulated “stuff” belonging to The Daughter With a Serious Case of Failure To Launch.

To be fair, I can’t lay all the blame at the feet of UR and DD. If I was truly determined to fix the problem, I would find a way, but whenever I try going through the house with the intent to “organize”, I find myself overwhelmed by the task. How do other people do it? I visit people like my sister who is the dictionary definition of “neatness”, and wonder how she does it. Even her washing machine is clean. Not a speck of dust or hardened gunk to be seen.

I’ve read all those “helpful household hints” books by people claiming to be reformed messies, but who I strongly suspect are just control freaks on a mission to alphabetize the world. Their methods just don’t work In Real Life. How many people can go around with a stack of 3X5 cards in their pockets? Seriously…how many of us are conscious enough at 6:30 in the morning to shine the kitchen sink for crying out loud???

I start out with the best of intentions but eventually there comes a point where I wind up sitting in the corner, clutching my blankie.