Old Habits Die Hard

One of my favorite ‘cleaning’ pastimes is to put everything laying around junking up the place on a made bed, organize it into piles and then put where it belongs. In theory, this seems like a good idea. The problem is, it never happens.

Usually, I get the inspiration sometime before noon, figuring that I have plenty of time to take care of business. Generally what happens is, come midnight/1 a.m. when my husband and I are dragging ass to bed, we walk in and say, ‘Oh, crap!’ because I forgot I did it and he had no idea in the first place.

Within 30 seconds, it all winds up back on the floor in a heap, all the painstaking organizing and pile making undone. That’s where we’re headed tonight because, as usual, I strayed wildly off track.

Despite my complete and total lack of success with this process, I continue to try it. I’ve been doing it for as long as I’ve been a clutterbug, which has pretty much been since exiting the womb.

Back before I was married, I used to just move stuff over enough so I could sleep. It was really pretty amazing what a small area I could confine myself to, for weeks at a time. Now that I’m married, I’m forced to throw it all back on the floor. But I do have a whole entire spare bed I can cover and hope no one wants to spend the night.

One thing I can say is that I come by it honestly: I inherited this little trick from my mom. I remember way back when I lived in Atlanta and I brought my boyfriend at the time over to my parents’ new house. I was showing him around when we got to their guest bedroom where the bed was completely covered. The ex in question even went so far as to say, ‘Now I know where you get it from.’

In retrospect, I don’t remember my mom having much luck with this particular M.O. either, but I guess old habits die hard for her, too.