By Madeleine KandoI 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
3 comments:
This is great: my self-image just went from SLOB to BUTTERFLY! Like you, I was spoiled for 20 years by my first husband who was Mr. Clean. Now, in my second marriage to someone who is comfortable floating between the waves of chaos and order, I've begun to realize how messy I really am. And you've identified the deeper reason for it: I like to keep juggling a lot of balls in the air because if I let them all drop, I'm afraid I'll get bored. So all the "piles" stay pending: half-weeded gardens; little stacks of articles-to-read-in-the-near-future; half-finished sewing or knitting projects that I'll get to in my old age... But, as you say, we're not slobs after all. We're just more comfortable with the fact that everything reverts to chaos in the end anyway.
Then again, it depends on how you define "chaos." Are the cycles of birth and death, or the orbits of the planets considered "chaos" or "order?" I haven't studied these theories yet, but your post has made me curious...
They used to call me “messy”. I didn’t like people calling me that so I went through great pains to become a neat nick. But after reading Madeleine’s Living in Limbo I am not sure I made the right decision. I continuously seem to jump from one extreme to the other.
Before I start a job, let us say, re-fitting a bathroom door lock that won’t shut, the coast has to be clear, my tools ready. I even make sure the floor is protected with plenty of newspaper to catch the mess, because I am a tidy person now. Then, as I get more involved I seem to need more and more unexpected items of necessity to complete the job. Like chisels and sand paper etc, but then the chisel is blunt so I need to sharpen it (dear Henry) so I go to the tool cupboard in the kitchen to get the drill out with the sharpening bit leaving footprints of saw dust everywhere and then I need paint to repaint the door but the drops of paint drip onto the saw dust covered newspaper which I accidentally tread on before going back to the kitchen to get a broom to clean up the mess and before I know it, the bathroom, the hallway and the kitchen floors are covered in paint. An hour later everything is sparkling again. Now I see a crack in the wall on the other side of the bathroom wall. I must have caused it when banging too hard with the hammer and chisel earlier. Oh damn, now I have to get the masonry chisel to scrape the crack, the filler to fill it, the newspaper to protect the floor . . .
I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t have been easier staying messy.
Brilliant piece, Madeleine!
I'll join in the conversation with some random comments - neatly numbered and organized:
1. unlike you and Jan, I am on the anal side - along with Hans and Juliette. (This word comes from Freud's idea of "anally retentive" people).
2. Sociologists speak of "complementary mate selection": you are messy, your husband is a neat freak. An extroverted man is married to a timid woman, etc. This works well. Opposites attract. After all, if opposites didn't attract, most men would marry men and most women would marry women, right?.
3. Entropy (= the second law of thermodynamics) is the law of the universe. In the end, everything will be chaos. We already see this in my grandchildren's rooms. Entropy can only be avoided through a counterforce. For example when I pick up my grandchildren's mess.
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