More Oscar Madison Than Felix Unger?

Don't despair, you might not be as big of a slob as you thought. Take me, for instance.

Our house is chock full of crap and, I'll admit it, most of it is mine. Recipes, receipts, lists, junk mail, clothes, books, happy meal toys, kitchen gadgets, baking pans, sporting equipment (funny if you know me and how un-athletic I am), etc.

And while I've always said at least I'm just messy, not dirty, it has been cold comfort. Until yesterday.

Since I've been home with Ian, I've had the pleasure of seeing our meter reader. She's a super nice lady and I always feel completely guilty when I see her that she has to go through such an obstacle course just to do her job.

Not sure of her schedule, I am sure that there have been plenty of times she's had to maneuver around garbage bags and recyclable items we pile at the back door in lieu of putting them outside in their proper receptacles just to get inside.

After she makes it down our cat-hair covered basement stairs, there are untold numbers of boxes, kids' toys, groceries and more she has to navigate around. Once we finally got rid of all the stuff we moved to this house that we decided we didn't need after the fact, it was pretty well organized down there. For awhile.

But a few weeks ago, we started to have some work done that caused us to move all the stuff out of our coal room into the main area of the basement, so it's probably now worse than ever.

Long story long, I was apologizing to this dear, patient woman for the mess she always encounters when visiting our home and she assured me I had nothing to worry about. That she's seen some pretty disgusting things in her day (fat old men in their underwear notwithstanding). Including kids eating food off plates that were literally crawling with cockroaches.

Somehow, I feel vindicated. I'm okay comparatively speaking, and you probably are, too.