Oh my, this place is a MESS!

Thinking about Bill coming home has made me *suddenly* (duh!) realize that my solitary lifestyle is about to come to an end. Looking around La Casa Redondo with an objective eye, I've decided I'm once again living in the Land of Too Much Clutter. A Hog-Waller of monumental proportions.

The coffee table (four square feet of what used to be clear horizontal surface area) is heaped with detritus--catalogs, bank statements, junk mail, sewing kit, miscellaneous hardware, discarded bras (they get tight in the evening, I'm still doing the bra change-out about twice per day, and somehow can't be roused to do this with a hamper nearby?), CDs, DVDs, clipboards, road atlas, Kleenex boxes (why are there TWO on this table?), remote controls, magazines, birthday cards, stamps, pens and pencils, band-aids, tweezers, nail clippers, shoelaces, hats, gloves, journals, photographs, coupons, postcards, and...you get the idea, I'm sure. It's all starting to reach a critical mass of About-to-Slide-Onto-the Floor.

Don't read any further, Mom. Yes, things have just gone to hell in a handbasket since you left.

The bathroom needs some serious swamping-out, the bedroom is a prototype teenaged girly-mess of discarded clothes (that don't fit!), and then there are the books, piled high on Bill's side of the bed.

Upstairs, where the kids will do their all-night, slumber-party thing when they come, the floor is filled with eBay staging materials--boxes of merchandise, empty shipping boxes, tape, packing paper and peanuts, labels. The dog has claimed the guest futon (so those blankies are going to have to be washed!) and there are stuffed toys littering the floor around her nest by the window.

And the basement? I can still get from the stairs to the outside door, but it involves some stepping-over and shoving-out-of-the-way.

I am a terrible person.

When the kids were growing up, I could always justify my marginal housekeeping skills (and sheer lack of interest in housework), by saying that we had more interesting things to do than keeping the house picked up. We were creative people! We were doing educational things! We were also lazy and drowning in clutter. And that educational process could have included a few lessons on respecting our personal environment!

In fits and starts, I would become enraged by my lack of discipline and my inability to get anyone else to join in a cooperative effort to pick up after ourselves. I would often marvel when watching my children or husband walk across the floor and step over a dirty sock or dropped jacket, without ever breaking stride. They never even saw it, let alone stooped down to pick it up!

Occasionally, I would reach a level of frustration and chaos known as Hiring Someone to Help.

"Your house isn't dirty, it's just messy," one such helper told me. "Also, you have more pencils than I've ever seen in my life!"

Yes, that's my problem right there--too many pencils. Sheesh.

Today, I resolve to put something away whenever I move through the house. I will clean a part of the bathroom everytime I go in there. I will wipe a kitchen countertop when I go to get a glass of water, throw away a piece of unneeded paper when I start to step over it, and at least start the process of decluttering my coffee table.

I know it's under there, somewhere.