(Edited to add: yeah, this is long. And sorry I haven’t blogged for a while, I was totally sick with, I think, a gall bladder attack)
I have this crazy fear of people seeing my new house. Why? Well because it is rather messy. And disorganized. And I, my friends, am organized. I have always maintained that I am organized only because I am, actually, incredibly disorganized. Can you follow that. The conversation usually runs along the line of:
“oh jenn, you are so organized with all your schedules for completing your thesis and binders for tracking journal articles.”
“no, I am a spaz who would never find anything if I didn’t do this. If left to my own devices I would be sitting in the middle of a pile of papers, dirty dishes, and unwashed knickers.”
Substitute all sorts of things for that first line. My ongoing lists, my organization of my work files, my spreadsheets comparing different strollers along the lines of prices, features, and colour options…
Now take that second line - my greatest fear - and make that my current reality. I just feel like my house has become an incarnation of my true disorganized internal self. The rooms full of boxes half unpacked. The piles of baby stuff in the living room. The never really emptied laundry baskets of clothes.
Anyone who knew me in my teen years knows I’m not a tidy person. I am a cluttered person. I have cluttered thoughts, cluttered shelves, cluttered purses of tic tac containers with only one tac left. I struggle against my impending towers of clutter daily. The move down from PG where I went from a 3 bedroom house with full basement to a two bedroom apartment saw the clutter build (in my mind). Although there is an argument to be made that it wasn’t really clutter, it was just the reality of moving from a larger home to a smaller apartment while also merging households with my husband. And now we’re in a house and it hasn’t gotten much better despite the basement (empty and waiting for us to find the perfect renter) and the third bedroom (beeb-a-rama). Add to this the one week in new house and then beeb makes his debut just a smidge early and we have the perfect recipe for Jenn going mental with the mess.
But I’ve been pretty good. I’ve gone a bit zen on the messes and whatnot.
Mostly.
It is just when I think of someone coming over and seeing my nice new house that I kinda freak. I worry about being judged. And I think part of what I struggle with is the difference between gross messes/unhealthy clutter, normal homes that are lived in, and The Perfect Home ™.
I don’t understand how some of my friends have those homes: those perfect homes. You know, those homes without books stacked around the living room and laptops with papers on the dining room table. Homes with coordinating furniture and things that all fit in their places. Homes with bowls of things in the middle of the dining room table that aren’t even real things like balls made up of willow sticks or something. And vases full of glass beads or glass rods or, um, stuff. And shelves with so few books on them that there is room to put some books flat and leave a space and then have a nice single piece of pottery. All the furniture matches - throughout the whole house! There is a single accent colour in the living room and everything is either the neutral or the accent.
I really saw it when I watched Juno. You know the difference between the adoptive home and Juno’s home - that is how I feel. And I don’t want that perfect house, I’ll never have it so why want it? But I still struggle with feeling that people might judge me when they see my house. And I don’t know why there would be this value put on the one vs the other… I don’t judge those who have those kinds of homes, I don’t judge those who don’t - unless it is me.
Cat hair rolls in tumbleweeds down the floor as you walk from the living room to the kitchen. Some kitty kibble might greet you there where Rupert has knocked the bowl over. It doesn’t sit there long enough to rot; I don’t have a smelly dirty house - but it isn’t vacuumed or swept every day, and right now it isn’t even done every week. I have so many beautiful quilts and knitted blankets and pillow covers from far away lands bought/knitted/hand-crafted by people I love. I love them, I wrap myself in them, I display them in a jumble of colour and textures at the end of the couch. But they are not monocromanic in the slightest. And they all live in my living room at the same time.
What is funny is that if I think of homes I have known growing up - my home, my friends’ homes - that are similar to this, I remember them as being so comfortable and cozy and loving. I grew up expecting homes with comfy couches waiting to have the various quilts pulled over feets and legs as we all snuggle down with popcorn to watch a (vhs) movie. There should be a cat sleeping on the quilt when you go to pull it down. There should be a half-read magazine on the mismatched end table where you go to put your glass of pop. Somewhere on the main floor someone has a spot set up where they are writing/painting/knitting/crafting/sewing so there are piles of books, paints, textiles, feathers, papers. I loved those houses. And when I am in the right mood, I love the thought of being one of those houses.
So why is it that I stress about being that other house? I think part of it is having a new house. I think another part is all the home decorating shows. And I think, now, there is more stress put upon having these coordinated homes. I know as a teen I rolled my eyes at fancy rooms nobody was allowed to go in unless there was company. Not to say I don’t like a neat home, at times, but this is different. And not to say I don’t like a decorated home, I love decorating and I love beautiful things - but again this is something different. This is a fear. This is a strange belief about a “perfect” house.
And this isn’t about having a baby. Trust me, I’ve struggled with this before Malcolm arrived. Now, thank goodness, I just have a valid excuse.
I will now share some pictures of my home - when we first moved in and from this week:
(please note the box of huggies is, in fact, a box of cloth diapers)
And I won’t leave you without some beeb (boob pic at the end - you’ve been warned):
