Living in Limbo

By Madeleine Kando

I am not a very organized person, I am the first one to admit it. Probably because deep down I know that trying to create order in one’s life is futile and a total waste of time. There is such a thing as the law of entropy (if you haven’t heard of it yet, it means that if things are left to their own devices, they will always revert back to chaos). So there you have it: proof that organizing, dusting, cleaning and putting things away is a never ending task. If God had meant us to be organized he would not have created the law of entropy.

Cleaning up and putting things away reminds me too much of the story of Sisyphus, the Greek king who had to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity.
I am comfortable with my messy nature. I have accepted the inevitability of having to spend a large portion of my day looking for things but I am pretty good at remembering where I misplace them (except my glasses - looking for some misplaced item without being able to see is a challenge). At times when a friend comes over, I can tell by their shocked expression that not all is as it should be in my house.

There is some reason to my madness though. I am messy because it allows me to pretend I am a butterfly. I like to flutter from one idea to another, from one mess pile to another. Leave a little bit of things unfinished and then go back to it so it’s fresh and messy. Once something is organized, it’s done, dead, finished. No more room for growth. I am secretly messy because I like the adventure of finding something undiscovered. A messy world is a world of discovery, change and surprise. An organized world is a static world, safe, boring.

I was living my little disorganized life, not being too bothered by my messy nature. The problem only started when I got married. I had the good fortune of marrying a man that appreciates me: my sense of humor, my intelligence, my beauty… my modesty. But my misfortune is that this wonderful man is also a very organized person and takes great pleasure in placing things where they belong. At first it was a welcome change in my life. He was like Cinderella’s little animal friends: the chipmunks do the sweeping, the mice to the dusting, the birds lift heavier items in unison to place them on shelves. I could hear the background music as I watched my new husband metamorphosize our house.

Now that I think back, I should have seen the warning signs of what happens when two people at opposite ends of the ‘orderly/messy’ spectrum get together. At first the symptoms were harmless: boxes containing old sunglasses quietly disappearing. Newspaper clippings of half-read articles vanishing overnight. But as more and more items started to disappear from where I had carelessly left them in my usual messy way, I began to think that I was suffering from early symptoms of alzheimer: ‘I swear I left my keys here yesterday’. One day, when my wallet was removed from it’s usual misplaced location I panicked: ‘Oh no! Somebody broke in and stole my wallet!’ When my car keys vanished from the spot where I had negligently tossed them, I almost had a heart attack. ‘Oh my God. I locked my keys in the car!’

So you see, living with an organized person is like living in limbo. The stress it causes to never be sure where things will be when you wake up in the morning requires a strong dose of valium. To hope that your glasses will be where you left them so you can make that first cup of coffee (hoping the cups have not mysteriously moved too). I have seriously considered going to couples therapy, not because I am ‘domestically challenged’ but in the hopes that my dear husband could be weaned off his well-intentioned but lethal desire to clean up.

If only all my possessions could be like my cell phone: equipped with a ringer. I would ‘call’ my keys, my glasses, my wallet, and presto, no more wasted hours looking for things. But for now I am resigning myself to the inevitable. Searching has become my middle name.leave comment here