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Thursday, March 12, 2009

Practicing Self-Discipline

It is Spring Break and I got kicked out of the dorms. Most kids went home or on some trip that their parents paid for, but I am crashing at my friend's house while they are camping so that I can work. I was kind of excited about it because the house is nice and big and has multiple rooms with rugs and couches and barstools, but I'm one of those people that likes everything exactly their way. And nothing here is my way.

The house is owned by some single dude who used to live here and rent out a condo, but then he couldn't afford to live here so he now lives in the condo and rents out the house. It is fully furnished and cluttered with horrible picture arrangements and Civil War paraphernalia. He has a framed doily hanging next to the side door and a collection of antique baking utensils and pans on another wall. The dining room is full of things that "could be sold" but haven't, and Mike (my friend who lives here and is basically the house manager) has not taken any initiative to make it better.

It's not that everything in it is awful, it's just the way it's been set up. I hate plain walls, but that doesn't mean I'm going to plaster horrible groupings of shit in horrible frames all over them. Okay, it's not all shit, some of them actually have pictures of his family and friends, but mostly it's shit.

One day, hopefully within the next year or two when I have my own reality TV show where I fix people and introduce them to clean, enjoyable living, I will take places like this and the people that live in them and make it all better.

Seriously, the dude owns FOUR coffee makers, FOUR! I just don't get it.

I do believe that all of this stem from my upbringing and how as a child I used to hoard things and then when my mother would come in with a black garbage bag I would flip out and then, when she was napping, I would remove the bag from the bin outside and hide it in my closet. Why? Because those were MY THINGS! And of course after a month it would start to smell and I would throw it out myself. It wasn't until my sisters introduced me to containers that I started to enjoy organizing and as a result I love throwing things away, cleaning out drawers, cleaning out closets, cleaning out everything.

When I was thirteen I babysat for this family who lived in an exceptionally messy house. I thought I'd do them a favor and organize their kitchen after I put the kids to bed and discovered that they had fifteen skillets, and gave up. The kitchen in the house now is much larger but needs just as much help. And the garbage disposal doesn't work, but MIKE DIDN'T TELL ME! And I had to find out the hard way when the sink backed up and took hours to drain.

Only two more days, and then I will return to my cage.

1 comment:

Cyndi said...

I've heard your kitchen organizing story recently. There were some strong emotions involved in the telling. Some people don't appreciate your organization skills. :)