Exquisite Mess

Somewhat astonished to note that we do not, in fact, have the messiest house in America. I finally got around to reading a hilarious/unsettling article that appeared in WaPo last month about a new cable reality show where they take some poor slobs and clean up/makeover their house.

Not that I’ll be watching it…As a member of a TV-free household (actually, we do have a television set on which we watch Netflix, but no reception whatsoever), I’m pretty much out of the loop on the latest in reality programming. I didn’t even know there was a “Style Network” until I read this piece. We did watch a couple episodes of Top Chef while on vacation with my sister and her gang a couple of months ago. Entertaining-- but not enough to make me sign up for a satellite!


Still, nice to know that there’s somebody out there in worse shape than us. Our house is pretty chaotic. My mother, God bless her, has to be one of the worst housekeepers of all time, so I come by it honestly. The truth is, Christian and I are both embarrassingly disorganized—in different ways, of course, just to be sure that we drive each other totally crazy. In my previous life, I kept it together by simply not accumulating stuff. I’m a minimalist at heart. I really do get some kind of endorphin buzz from throwing stuff away. But I’ve discovered that one of the harsh realities of parenthood is that you start to acquire things related to the health and happiness of your children and are forced, for one reason or another, to hang onto them. Also doesn’t help that I’m married to a collector. Our house overflows with boxes and boxes of his unsorted junk. When we were dating, the sneaky bastard stored all of his extraneous belongings in a conveniently unoccupied apartment across the hall, only to have to reclaim them all around the time I moved in. This is the guy who, as a fifth grader, had his desk dragged out of his classroom and prominently displayed in the hallway as an example of how not to maintain one’s personal space. "It really was an exquisite mess," my beloved recalls, with what sounds like great nostalgia. They gave him until lunchtime to clean it up, which he did. Afraid, I guess, of being forced to skip a meal.

Anyway, the pathetic folks on the show are in a totally different league. The question, as raised in the article, is when does clutter become pathological. At what point does messiness reflect honest-to-god mental illness? It sounds like poor old Mindy and Phil may have crossed the line. As for us, I think we remain, at least for now, on the side of sanity. I usually manage to clean the bathrooms once a week and good old Papa hits the catbox with something approaching regularity. We just need a good purge (five years and I’m still waiting!), some storage solutions and to remember to put things away when we’re done with them (Mama!). I haven’t yet tried withholding food as a motivational technique but may be on to something….

A Room of Her Own

Well, we’ve finally done it. We’ve moved little Coco into her own room. At 6 ½ months, it was about time. It’s not that we’re into the co-sleeping thing--she started put in our room in the lovely antique cradle that Christian’s Aunt Polly lent us. The plan was to move her out after a couple of months. But we simply didn’t have the energy to move her. And so when she outgrew the cradle, we put up her crib at the foot of our bed.

We hadn’t planned it that way. Henry was on his own by three months and sleeping twelve hours at a stretch by five months (He is still an amazing sleeper which has kept me sane throughout his supercharged toddlerhood.). In fact, we’ve been ready to get her out of there for some time. We’ve been itching to get the AC cranking and watch Netflix with the volume above 6. Also hoping this will get her to stop waking up several times a night. It’s just too easy when you can roll over and look your source of food and comfort in the eye every time you wake up.

The problem was that there was nowhere to put her. We had very briefly considered sticking her in with Henry, but after observing his behavior when sharing a room for a week with his cousin Scarlett (who’s got him by a few months and several pounds) we decided against it. So we set our sights on the tiny, wretched little room we referred to as the office. To understand the psychological hurdle involved, you must know that our rustic old farmhouse is built in two parts: the more recent frame half is where pretty much everything happens: the kitchen, living room, our bedroom and Henry’s, and a bath. Until now, the two-room log portion has been a kind of no man’s land, with the room downstairs full of junk from ceiling to floor, and upstairs the “office”, a grimy lair where the Christian used to hang out writing songs and watching You Tube videos and a dumping ground for unfiled paperwork, old magazines, and his collection of beat up old guitars and various other musical equipment. Put my baby in there? You must be kidding. But as one sleepless night rolled into another, I eventually came around. For one thing, the house just isn’t that big. If she needs me, I can still get to her in a few seconds.

Anyway, we hossed it yesterday and got (almost) everything out of there. Without all the junk, it’s rather nice, with two bright windows and lots of exposed wood. It’s a pretty bare bones nursery: a crib, a dresser and a changing table. But our low maintenance girl seems pretty happy in there. I am delighted to report that last night went about as well as I could have hoped. Only one middle of the night feeding around 1:30. After that, we didn’t hear much from her until 7:30 or so when I heard some pleasant little cooing and gurgling sounds over the monitor (or harmonitor as Henry calls it. He is, after all, the son of a blues singer!).

So we are now gratefully looking forward to the return of restful nights and watching Star Trek DVD’s with abandon. Now, what to do with all the guitars in our living room…?