Watching a "Clean House" episode brought back a memory. The husband and wife on TV blamed each other for the clutter, and neither took the time to pick up his/her things. It was almost as if one person's clutter enabled the other to be messy as well.
At the end of my junior year of college, Shelly approached me about rooming together in the dorm. I cringed. I liked the girl a lot, but she and her roommate had lived in a disgustingly messy, dirty room all year. Susie had slept in a sleeping bag on her bunk all year, no sheets; there were at least five borrowed popcorn poppers scattered throughout their room, still with old oil in them. (A couple of us had peeked in once looking for our poppers.) Clothing, books, papers, shoes were strewn helter skelter. I told Shelly I just couldn't live like that. She assured me that she hadn't wanted to live like that either, but she just got in bad habits living with Susie. We did end up rooming together senior year and had a beautifully decorated, NEAT room the entire year. There was no problem.
These two stories made me wonder if we allow lots of clutter in our homes, are we enabling our husbands and children to develop bad habits as well? If we clean up OUR stuff, I've found that it encourages good habits for whoever else lives with us.
It's like these posts, I read it and then say "hey, I hadn't thought of that" and then head to clean up that area. Habits are hard to break, as I'm finding with our "office", just tossing papers on the desk instead of filing them immediately has been a hard habit for me to break, but I am making progress and this whole experience has been about one day at a time :). I can see a difference in my attitude about clutter and find that I put into practice what I'm learning.
ReplyDeleteThis morning I cleaned out old chip bags, candy etc... from the pantry.