Sometimes I feel like if only I could get organized enough, everything else in my life would fall into place and I would finally be happy. It�s not too far from the truth, actually. In the past when I HAVE gotten organized for all too brief periods, my stress level has gone way down and even though the process of staying organized keeps me hopping, my perception of having enough free time seems to increase. But as I�ve never managed to keep it up very long, I have no idea if it is really the solution to what ails me. Am I falling off the organization wagon because of some perverse self-destructive streak in me, or does staying organized at some point simply become overwhelming and thus part of the problem?

Still, having my life and apartment in order has a soothing effect on me, and chaos has quite the opposite. The state of our apartment right now reflects my inner turmoil�or is it the other way around? The state of my living room is mess on top of filth. Believe it or not, I�ve been doing some cleaning� last weekend I got the kitchen and bathroom cleaned, got the laundry all caught up and got a good start on purging all the extraneous crap from my closet before running out of time and energy. And here it is a week later, and not only is the living room still filthy but my closet is still torn up from my zealous search and discard mission of over a week ago; and everything else I cleaned is gradually returning to its natural filthy state as well. How frustrating it all is. Every dish in the kitchen sink, every crumb on the floor, every disgusting hair on the toilet and toothpaste glob in the sink fills me with despair. Each represents a no-win choice� do I want to ignore this and try instead to relax in this decidedly UN-relaxing atmosphere, or do I want to sacrifice all my free time to flittering about the place, straightening this and cleaning that, organizing and picking up and throwing away and restocking?

There is no middle ground, it seems. If I do something but don�t manage to do everything, I feel like I�ve wasted my efforts� I�m still tired, still busy and still sitting in a disgusting, disorganized, stressful mess. And if I DO try to do everything� well, then I�m stressed out over not having any time to relax.

The worst thing about it is that I know it IS possible for me to be organized at times. I�ve actually BEEN organized at home and stayed that way for weeks at a time. What it takes is constant attention to the little jobs, something that doesn�t come naturally to an ADD person at all. It�s a problem with motivation� I just can�t seem to get excited enough over three bowls and two cups in the sink to actually go through the production of Doing the Dishes� I must wait until there�s enough stuff out there that the �do the dishes� light goes on in my head, and that�s only triggered by having so much stuff dirty that it�s become a huge ugly chore that I don�t want to deal with. Everything is like that. It goes against my basic brain wiring to clean the toilet when there are only a couple of short & curlies stuck there, or to do my filing when there are only three pieces of paper in the pile, or to write a report today when I�ve still got four whole days left before it�s due.

I�ve tried, I�ve really tried, to become a person who DOES take care of things while they�re still in a manageable stage. I�ve spent weeks on end flitting around my house, washing up those couple of dishes sitting on the counter and picking up those two candy wrappers off the coffee table and wiping those those three hairs out of the bathroom sink and washing, folding and putting away my laundry while it�s only one small load. Yeah, each individual job does become MUCH easier. But it never lasts�

Supposedly it only takes 21 days to form a new habit but it doesn�t seem to matter HOW many days I manage to successfully fight off my natural slacker tendencies and keep up with things, there always comes a point when I just want to sit down. The problem is that all the flitting from little chore to little chore, while not as physically tiring as cleaning up a disaster area, is mentally exhausting to me, to the point that when I do finally sit down I don�t get up again for days. Unattended to, it�s remarkable how swiftly things revert to their natural chaotic state. Before I know it I�m right back where I started, drowning in clutter and dirt and having no idea how to begin to dig myself out again.

I don�t even remember what the point of this entry was going to be. I�m just so frustrated with being the way I am, and losing hope that lasting change is possible. I need there to be some kind of resolution, but I don�t see acceptance as a viable option either. Directly or indirectly, disorganization affects everything else in my life that I�m trying to improve as well� money, my weight, my relationship, school. Even my �career,� such as it is� I�d be a hell of a lot less reluctant to go to work if I knew that when I was done for the day, I was really DONE for the day. Yeah, I guess I do do that a lot, even now� but just how relaxing is it to sit around amongst the shambles you�ve made of your life?

There was one time in my life that being organized was almost effortless. When my marriage broke up, I left the house to Dick since he was going to keep custody of the Evil Childe, and I took very little with me as I didn�t want to tear their home apart. A love seat, one box full of books, a small box of pictures and mementos, the computer, and my TV. Dick scrounged me up a discarded dinette and an old coffee table from where he worked, I rented a double bed for $10 a month and then spent $200 at Kmart on a phone, a sheet and comforter set, some dishes, a coffee maker and a toaster. I had so little stuff to keep track of, and just me to deal with. No kid, no man, no animals� just a few bills, easily kept up with until I lost my job. My clothes and towels fit into one laundry basket and were easily washed, dried and folded at the laundromat within 90 minutes or so (and there was no putting-away involved as I didn�t own a dresser so the clean stuff just lived in the basket on the floor of my closet.) Grocery shopping could be accomplished in 20 minutes and resulted in three bags or so, easily carried and put away and leaving plenty of room in the cupboards and refrigerator for me to see what exactly I had going on in there. There was very little stuff in my apartment to make clutter of, so picking up after myself was fast and easy. The only dishes I owned was a set for four and I was only cooking for one, so the dirty dishes rarely ever even reached a sinkful.

I easily got myself into kind of a routine� I�d cook up a pot of something like chili or spaghetti that would last me a couple of days, and on the other days I�d eat something quick like a sandwich or scrambled eggs or the Chinese takeout I splurged on once a week. I�d pick up the apartment and do the dishes every couple of days, and every Saturday morning I�d get up and give the place a thorough cleaning�it usually took about an hour to dust, vacuum and clean the bathroom. Another couple of hours to get my laundry and grocery shopping done, and I was done for the week. My bills were few� rent, electric, ISP, my school loan, the phone bill (and two credit cards and some medical bills I couldn�t even begin to pay and so was ignoring) and I paid those weekly� 5 minutes, tops. It was all so easy� the first and only time in my life I�ve been able to stay on top of things. And I loved it� I loved living by myself and being responsible for nobody but me. If only the love of my life had lived across town instead of five hundred miles away!

It is just so hard for me to believe how much more complicated life becomes when there are two or three people in the household. The Prince and the Evil Childe ARE messy, but why am I so much messier now than when I lived alone? I look around and realize that a lot of the stuff sitting out is mine. Of course, a lot of it IS theirs and a lot MORE of it is just �household� stuff� groceries I can�t find a place for, mail and bill-paying paperwork, a box of stuff that needs to be donated, and lots of general crap in bags and boxes and baskets that I just don�t have a place for.

It just amazes me that one person can live so simply and easily and for three it�s just so complicated. Grocery shopping takes a good couple of hours, more if I go to both Jewel and Aldi�s to save money, and it�s exhausting� it nets me probably 15 bags now, and it�s a huge pain in the ass to put it all away in our smallish refrigerator and cupboards. Not to mention the small fortune it costs. We took all our laundry to the Laundromat last week and we�ve got SIX big baskets (not counting the stuff we left at home that wasn�t dirty� but this is the bulk of the stuff that we wear and use on a regular basis.) The sheer number of cups and glasses and bowls and spoons involved in supporting the feeding habits of a family of three ensures that there will ALWAYS be a few dishes in the sink with the rest scattered around the living room and the Evil Childe�s bedroom. Never mind the carnage and general debris from the occasional cooking of an actual meal. The bathroom is always wet and constantly filthy, with man-pee having been squirted with gleeful abandon in the general vicinity of the toilet, hair and whiskers everywhere, some unidentifiable splatters on the mirror that I�m sure I didn�t put there, and globs of toothpaste as big as my head growing in the sink like so many stalagmites. Then there�s the bill paying� we�ve got probably twenty different bills coming in which I must first sort out from amongst the sixteen pounds of trash the bill companies like to send along with each bill� then I have to find a place to keep the bills until we have actual money to pay them, and then there is the sitting down, looking at the bills vs. the money we have, several minutes of cradling my head in my hands in utter despair, many more minutes of sweating tiny droplets of blood as I furiously work the calculator trying to hit upon some ratio of income to outgo that allows us to have both electricity and food in the same month�

Well, it�s been three pages now, and while I�ve worked up a good head of steam over this, I sure can�t say I�ve hit upon any solutions. And now to add more joy to my life, it�s time to go to work. And guess who is yet again committed to working way more hours than she wants to work, filling in for a vacationing billing person while her OWN work continues to pile up? Just guess.

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Last Five
Crappy job crap, weird neighbor, and someone whose baby I apparently want to have - 2006-05-08
Live from the dump - 2006-04-09
Kind of like a muzzle for your brain - 2006-03-29
...and then she fell ass-first into my cereal bowl - 2006-03-28
Playing catch-up - 2006-03-27

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