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{ Friday, March 14, 2003 }

Messiness.

 
My name is mary ann and I fail at neatness.

I've devoted like ten hours to cleaning my room over the last week. I'm the only one who can tell a difference. I think I have to go out and buy still yet more hangers. I don't know where my hangers keep going. My piles of clean and dirty clothing have gotten mixed in my fervor to create a path for anyone entering my room. My sweaters, skirts, and hanging clothes are all jumbled together because I ran out of hangers and set the clothes on top in the sweater trunk and then... well.... I had to get in there and get out other sweaters and now it's a huge mess.

I never learned how to use a dresser. I mean, I know how. I never mastered the art of keeping my clothes in the dresser. That sounds so stupid. Okay, it's like this. I have three dressers. Each dresser drawer is designated to a type of clothing. A drawer of t-shirts. A drawer of t-shirts with long sleeves. A drawer of jeans. Three little drawers of underwear. And on and on. Now, you would think that with this crazy organized system, that I could manage to keep on top of my wardrobe.

You would be wrong. It's not that I don't know what I'm doing. It's just that... well... I usually try on three or four outfits before we find the winner if I'm leaving the house. I take off my pajamas, I pull out Outfit Contender Number One. I put it on. I go downstairs. My pajamas are now on the floor. Outfit Contender Number One is not living up to my Fashion Potential. I go back upstairs. I take it off. I leave it on the end of my bed in case it turns out to actually be The Outfit. I repeat this process three times. Then I start on shoes. Only those get left on the floor.

Then I took so long picking out clothes that I have to run and do hair and make-up and jewelry and can't be troubled to put my clothes away. I come home and open my dresser drawer and get out some pajamas, ignoring the ones on the floor from the morning before. If the clothes I just took off are dirty, I put them in the hamper. If they're not, I usually just set them in the nearest open dresser drawer. I get into bed at night and the clothes migrate to the floor. Where I ignore them.

This leaves me with huge piles of clean clothing all over my bedroom floor and highly disorganized dresser drawers. Then when I am looking for clothes, I tend to pull the worn clothes out of the drawers and drop them on the floor in my fervor to find the right t-shirt.

Repeat the same process with everything I read. You now might understand what my bedroom floor looks like when the hamper is full of dirty clothes.

When I do laundry, I eventually bring the hamper back upstairs full of clean clothes. Except, usually I do this when I walk past it on my way up to grab something. Which means I set it in some clean spot and ignore it. And get dressed out of it. And basically, until it's only got one sweater and three random pairs of underwear left in the bottom, I leave it be. My dirty clothes then pile up near the hamper. Because I'll put them in there once I put away the clean clothes. By the time that happens, I've usually filled the laundry basket and the hamper and it's time to start the whole process again.

Sometimes, I get frustrated by my hamper of clean clothes and just dump it on the floor with the other clean clothes. This does not help the mess much. I mean, it makes the mess contain less dirty stuff, but usually it means more mess.

Once the piles of clean clothes get large and stable enough, I begin to use them like tables. I set stuff on them. Then when I go rummaging through the piles because I know that my beige cardigan was just an Outfit Contender two days ago, the piles end up with debris in them.

And sometimes the piles form on top of debris. Like that pile next to my bed. I'm afraid to get near it because I know that I got out of bed and accidentally stepped on it (I make a point of not walking on my clothes most of the time. And never in shoes) and I know there's a broken, glass hurricane lamp under (or in) there. Until I find the DustBuster, I'm not getting near that pile and I encourage others to do the same. It's been at least three weeks that I've been ignoring that pile.

Waste claims that the problem stems from me having too much clothing. I guess some people might think that. They do barely all fit in their three dressers (these are not small dressers. Well, the pajamas, slips, socks, etc. one is) and two closets and big trunk. Except that the drawers tend to end up empty (except the bra drawer) and things only get removed when they are being considered for wearing.

I guess I just have a lot of bad habits going here. Thinking about this this much is making me crazy. I need to go work on my room some more... I'm working toward a goal... mopping the floor before the party. I have eight days, and next week I'm going to be working....

posted by mary ann 4:11 PM


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