Habits of Highly Unorganized People

Last night Kyle was crying in his sleep, so I got up and checked on him. Barefoot, I stepped on a piece of his Tinkertoys set, and nearly sprained my ankle. Of course I shouted a curse. In the dead of night, with a sleeping/crying child not three feet away.

Luckily I woke nobody up. But I was pissed, because I keep repeating the mantra “Kyle has to clean up his room before bedtime…” in order to preserve our safety and to train him to keep his room clean.

This morning, however, when I came out to the kitchen/living room, I realized what a terrible example we set. During these three days that I work out of the home and the nights before them, all bets are off, and we focus on simply staying alive. There are toys and clothes strewn all over the floor and the kitchen is barely functional (yet, somehow, I’ve been able to keep a shiny sink).

It has to be this way because of the nature of our family and the way our schedule is organized. I let the housekeeper go a few months back to save money, and now that I am working at home two days a week while the kids are in daycare, I have taken it upon myself to do the housework during that time. Jury’s still out on whether or not that is working, since we’ve only had that kind of week once so far, and on one of those days I had AT&T messing around with the internet so I was forced to busy myself with laundry and such while I could not get online.

Now with all of my jobs (including that “Mom” one), I am busy from the moment I wake up until the moment I crash (or as it went last night, until my computer crashed). The house is in great disarray, and while I have waxed poetic about this before, it continues to be a problem. On the other hand, despite their new full time daycare schedule, the children seem to be happier because we play with them when we are all here instead of popping them in front of the TV to get some work done. So that’s good.

Yesterday, between the time Stewart left to drop the kids off, and the time I had to hop in the shower, I was dealing with the laundry mountain in the garage. There’s this one load I keep washing, then forgetting to put in the dryer, then discovering that it smells like mildew and washing it again. Yesterday I finally gave up and just put the whole load in the dryer, mildew and all, with four Bounce sheets. It’s Stewart’s clothes so he probably won’t notice. Is that wrong?

Anyway, while I was doing this, someone knocked on the door. “Who is it?” I called, breathless as I ran, sweating, out of the garage. “Do you need someone to clean your house?” she answered with a Mexican accent.

An angel. Internet, I really think it was an angel. Her name is Mirta, and I kept her number.