How I Became An Fan of Neat

My family likes to make fun of me because I am tidy.  Actually, they would probably call me OCD, or Type-A, or Anal Retentive.  Whatever.  They are jealous. It is true I am very neat.  I love an organized closet.  I find organizing my spices fun.  I love taking a carload of stuff to Goodwill.  I have been known to give my time and skills in organizing as house warming gifts to friends after a move.  It is part of my DNA.  Don't pick on me for my mad skilz...just step aside and admire how fast I can organize your closet.

In the event, though, that you wanted to look at this from a Nature vs. Nurture perspective, I have plenty of ammo for the nurture side of the debate as well.

Let's go back to my earliest memories of neatness.  My parents sent me to a Montessori pre-school.  I must have attended classes there for 3 or 4 years, but honestly I don't remember how long I was there. What do I remember from that school?  I will make a list (they taught me to do this):

• Acting out Goldilocks and the Three Bears - often
• Writing all the numbers from 1-1,000 in order on a calculator tape
• The plan of the property - lots of different buildings with various pathways to each
• Barfing on the bus every. single. morning.
• Playing with pie pieces to learn fractions
• We had to clean up this mess before we got out a new one.

In elementary school, I was a member of the scholastic book club.  I would get 2 hard-back books about once a month in the mail.  For awhile, some of these books were children's instruction manuals.  The clean your room book had you put all the stuff that was out of place in your room on the bed.  Then you picked through it and threw away all the trash.  Decided what should be given away.  Then put all the other things in their proper place.  I loved this book.  (My Mom may have loved it more.)

In my later elementary school years, I occasionally complained, "I'm boooooreed."  When I said such a thing to my Mom, it was her cue to give me a chore.  Not just any chore, but a chore that sucked. Cleaning the baseboards with a rag, ironing Dad's work shirts, and vacuuming the carpet so that all the lines overlapped perfectly are the jobs I remember most.

As I aged into Junior High, I became crazy about organizing my closet.  What drove me to this you ask? My sister.  She loved to borrow my clothes.  Only she wasn't really known for caring for her clothes the same way I did.  Heck, she still had recess everyday.  I learned that if I organized my closet by type of clothing and then by rainbow within each type, I could tell when I opened my closet doors if something was missing.  It would just jump out at me like a flashing neon sign:  The Blue, Green, and Yellow Shirt From The Limited Is Missing!!!! Inevitably, I would find it on the floor in my sister's closet, usually with a stain or missing button or mold.  (Just kidding about the mold.)

Moving on to college...my freshman year, I lived in the dorm with a random, picked-by-student-housing roommate.  I don't have a clue how they matched the two of us.  She was a night person, and I am a morning person.  She liked to practice witchcraft and play D&D, and I, um, didn't.  She was filthy messy, and I was not.  We literally had a piece of tape down the center of our dorm room.  Her side was approximately 1 foot deep with stuff at any given time.  My side was spotless, and I would have cleaned her side if I wasn't so afraid of her casting a spell on me.

This brings me to today.  Again, my family likes to poke fun at me.  But, I love being clean.  I get a little thrill when I open a closet or pantry or cabinet door and see everything stored orderly so that I can go straight for the thing that I am looking for.  That is not to say that my house is a museum.  I spent an hour picking stuff up last night - cleaning up the kitchen, taking stuff to the right rooms, gathering the dirty clothes off the floor, going through a week's worth of mail, putting the shoes back in the closet (Really! How do those shoes get everywhere?).  But if you ask me where to find something in my house, I can generally go straight to it.  If company were to show up at my front door, there are very few days I would be embarrassed to let them in.

I also love having some blank space.  I know some people think that the purpose of a horizontal surface is to have something displayed, stacked, stored, or set on it.  For me a bare counter or shelf gives me room to breathe.  Energy and calm can flow through bare space.  Stacks of stuff are things without a home, and that is stressful to me.  I like to have a place for everything, but I don't need every place to have stuff.

I will also acknowledge that I am the only one in control of my space.  Not having children, or a spouse, or a roommate living in my home makes it eleventy-thousand times easier for me to live a neat life than it is for people with a different lifestyle.

At the end of the day...whether I was born with this tendency, or it was drilled into me through life experience... I yam what I yam, as Popeye would say.  Love it or hate it.  It is me.


Psssst.  Seriously, I love to organize stuff.  It gives me all kinds of fulfillment and joyful energy.  If you ever have a project you want me to tackle, just ask.  It will probably make my day.