Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Messy is not me!

In Embrace the Messy from Sioux's Page, Sioux asks,

What things do you like to do that are messy? 

I have to confess that I don’t like messy. When things get messy, I feel my stress level increase. I have to straighten things up before I can really settle down to work. I like my work area to be clear or I find the mess very distracting.  The problem is that some of the things I like to do are messy.

I like to cook but it definitely involves mess! When I garden, it involves weeding, which means piles of weed and getting dirty. When I spin, there are usually tufts of fiber flying around in the air or when I’m carding my fiber, there is usually a mess around my chair. Paying bills involve a mess of paper around me until I get it all organized. I love to read so my piles and piles of books seem to look messy but I have them organized according to topics if they are nonfiction and favorites if they are fiction. I have seen posts on pinterest where people organize their books according to colors of the spines but I don’t think I’d be able to find anything I needed if I did that! Plus the mess of trying to organize according to color makes my eyes twitch!

When I am going to cook something, I need to straighten up the kitchen and start with a clean kitchen. If there are dirty dishes in the sink, I have to wash them before doing anything else. Overflowing trash cans drive me crazy.  I also wash the dirty dishes while my food is cooking.  I hate having dirty dishes in my sink overnight so if my husband eats something after I’m in bed and puts the dirty dish and spoon in the sink, I will get out of bed and wash them.

I cannot get into a bed that hadn’t been made up. Every morning I make the bed because I know that when I go to bed, I can’t get in it if it hasn’t been made. I have been known to make up a bed only minutes before getting in it at the end of the day.

When I sit at my computer, I need to have some kind of organization around me before starting on the computer.  I have to put things in organized piles of “save” and “bills to pay” or they will distract me from what I want to do.

This is the same reason I make lists because in my mind, I feel like lists are messy and I want to cross things off of them in order to clear them up.  I also feel like that when I’m crossing things off my lists, I’m making my life more organized and less messy.

Of course, if you came into my office, you might see it as messy and I see it as organized chaos. One man’s messy is another man’s organized chaos. I guess that is why many things are in a holding pattern in my office and really don’t do “work” in there. I end up taking my laptop or knitting or spinning and going to the sunroom or the playroom or the bedroom.


What do you do that is messy? How do you reconcile the mess? Please share.

No comments: