I Forget

When my children were little, they named me "Miss Forget" because they noticed that I had a hard time remembering things.  Like the saintly mother than I am, I laughed when they called me this because I was in no position to argue with them.  I frequently forgot lunches, appointments, playdates, essential items from the grocery store, and where I had put things during my occasional cleaning binges.  I would also forget things like Hubby's lifelong aversion to onions and follow a recipe to the letter only to have him eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner.  I have come to realize that "forgetting" the onion problem was passive aggression on my part.  Those early years had their rocky moments.

The Operating Principal in our home was that anytime something went missing, Hubby and Daughters 1 & 2 would accuse me of throwing it away because to them cleaning meant tossing even though I was always extremely careful not to toss anything important, like a report card or math binder.  Cleaning binges being binges, after all, I goofed once in a while and threw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.  Of all the things I inadvertently threw away, none was of particular importance or monetary value in the grand scheme of things, they were instead bits of clutter that had special meaning to their owners which I had failed to appreciate.  Every time this would happen, I would beat myself up for being an insensitive and overbearing matriarch, and proceed to empty out the trash bins while vainly searching for the missing objects, praying for God's mercy so that I could get out of the doghouse.  On a couple of occasions I did find the items in the trash, but most often they would be long gone.  My sins, however, were never thrown away:  they resided on a list which Hubby and Daughters 1 & 2 would recite from memory as proof that what they could not find I had obviously disposed of.  Unfortunately, I could never remember any of the times that I found the items they had accused me of throwing away, so for years I felt quite defenseless.

The other thing I did during my cleaning binges was to Organize the House and this involved finding a place for everything and putting everything in its place.  My three nearest and dearest compete with each other to be in the Packrat Hall of Fame to the point where they sometimes border on hoarding.  This upsets me because it is impossible to clean a cluttered house and when I am in a mood to clean, I let nothing stand in my way.  I have tried various methods of corralling the clutter such as boxing stuff up and storing it in the attic, basement, or garage to see how long it will be before anyone asks for their most precious scrap of paper or Pokemon eraser.  Once, after a box had sat undisturbed for three years, I looked through the contents and tossed it.  The very next day, Daughter #1 asked about that little rubber chicken she had gotten as a party favor in kindergarten which I had just found inside the box which the trash collectors had just picked up.  Of course I lied about it because if I hadn't looked in the box, I wouldn't have known the little rubber chicken was inside.  My penance for telling this lie was that Daughter #1 was hysterical and demanded that I turn the house inside out to help her find the damn thing.  For those things which I assumed had some value to their owners, i.e., they were in the top layer of clutter, I would attempt to stow away in a logical place with the hope that I would remember where to look when asked.  Unfortunately, I could never remember which Organizing Principal I was operating off on the day when I did the stowing and so the item would remain lost until months or years later when I found it while de-cluttering, re-organizing, or moving.

Why is my life so much more complicated than everybody else's?

Copyright 2012 Teresa Friedlander all rights reserved

When Highly Ineffective People Go Rogue

Highly Ineffective Person's Dwelling (when it was on the market)

I am coming off a month-long period of being Highly Effective.  This happens about once a year and catches me totally off guard.  To recap, in the past month, I packed Daughter #2 off to her sophomore year of college; removed every dust mote and mold spore, virus and bacterium, from the 1600 square foot apartment occupied by Daughter # 1 so that she will be able to breathe; helped my in-laws empty their family home of 40+ years; organized my husband's half of the home office; and re-organized my entire filing and bill-paying system.  And, I got my garden beds weeded, trimmed, and mulched while I was on the road!  I even managed to do some writing when I wasn't driving or slaving away.

My Office:  AFTER (family photo)

When I enter these (temporary) Highly Effective phases, it feels like a kind of mania.  I talk faster, write more, don't sleep (much), and feel like I can do anything.  I make lists and actually use them! I create strategies for how to manage my day and do the work that ten of me couldn't accomplish under normal circumstances.  And then, it all ends just as quickly and mysteriously as it began.  Suddenly, the kitchen is grimy, the floors are gritty, and the laundry has piled up into a three-day affair.

One thing I have learned in recent years is to make the most of these brief and rare periods of productivity because it is the only time I actually get anything done.  The rest of the time I feel like I am shuffling piles of papers, living in the laundry room, and panicking over what to fix for dinner for my husband who is "absolutely starving" and has to eat the minute he comes through the door.

The garage will have to wait until next year, I'm afraid.  Unless it "accidentally" burns down.

Copyright 2012 Teresa Friedlander, all rights reserved