Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Just Call Me the Purger

I'm not sure what happened to me but for those of you who knew me as a child and teenager I was messy. So messy in fact that I would have copious amounts of crap on my bed so I would make a spot for myself on the floor, and sleep there. It was ridiculous and I'm stunned my family allowed me participate in such ridiculous behavior. Actually I'm not all that stunned now that I know what I know. While I was in college I had to live in 400 square feet with two other people. I quickly realized that being messy was a bitch, it just couldn't happen, and if you were messy we were going to have prollll'lems. So I became a neat freak. I mean like NEAT FREAK. No surface went untouched, no closet went without cleaning, I was a machine when it came to being clean and tidy. The smell of bleach brought the biggest smile to my face. Seeing those tub tiles sparkle a little brought a happy little gleam to my eye. Who the feck was I? Who had I become? I had become THE CLEANING MONSTER.

Truth be told, being a clean/neat freak is not something that I learned from my parents. In preparation for family visiting and staying with my parents over the summer months, I put a plan into action for my their house. I wanted to help my parents fit all of their children and their children's children in a four-bedroom house for a fun-filled family visit. Its quite simple you see. You put a queen bed in one of the rooms, a queen sleeper sofa in the office, you make an office, and place bunk beds or two twin beds in the third room. Easy peasy. Right? DEAD WRONG SMART ASS.

So Coal Miner and I decide to make a visit to the 757 to assist my mother and father with this apparently extremely daunting and tiring task (my mother's exact words). I wanted to start out slow. Ease my parents into my purging. By now you probably know that I don't keep things very long. If I haven't worn it in about 9 months its going to Goodwill. I don't care how much it costs, if its ugly, its ugly and a fact is a fact. Goodwill bound. Just because a celebrity wore it or a rich person gave it to you, doesn't make it okay to keep b/c well, it sucks. Goodwill bound. Yea it didn't work out as planned. Each item I picked up to put in our various Goodwill bags was a battle. I received responses like: "Someone might want that.", "I paid a lot of money for that.", "That's really nice! I might use that one day.", "I fit in that a few years back, I'll fit into it again.", "I don't have any clothes in these 5 closets, you can't give those away!" "Mom mother paid a lot of money for that and gave it to me. Now, I don't use it, but that doesn't matter, put it back." The battle itself was so exhausting that I wanted nothing more than to do manual labor for 12 hours straight. Seriously, I would have paid to switch places with the Mexicans waiting for the paint trucks to pick them up at 7-11 on Little River Turnpike. How sad is that? Coal Miner started punching the air in the living room (true story based on fact).

In two hours I filled 7 bags with clothing. Yep you read that right. And that was only the start.

I love my parents, but I'm convinced after this little visit that they might be on the brink of hoarding. I'm going to try and convince my sisters to call A&E with me and stage an intervention. It will be like Intervention and Hoarders combined. If you don't' know what I'm talking about you need to do yourself a favor and watch these two shows on A&E. Intervention for one makes me feel really good about myself b/c I'm really glad I'm not a crack head, its so unbecoming (side note: my parents aren't crack heads either, but it would be a hoarding intervention b/c I'm fairly certain my mother is addicted to shopping). It also saddens me deeply b/c its a vicious cycle that really is difficult to break and most often just ends with (SPOILER ALERT FOR ALL SHOWS) a relapse. Hoarders, well...*sighing right now*. How people can be so mentally unstable to live in the conditions they do is beyond me. I mean I want to shake the shit out of them, but they wouldn't even care b/c most of them actually shit on their own floors (or in bags). Its foul, but its eye opening. Do it, go watch them. Do it now, I'm waiting. You can watch them online. Really, you can thank me later.

I've gone off topic haven't I? I have a tendency to do that, did you notice? I went down for the July 4th holiday and I have to say I actually didn't feel as crammed like sardines as I usually do. I don't know if its b/c Coal Miner and I slept in twin beds (I still laugh at this regularly) and had a lot of room for our stuff in my old bedroom, or if it was because I was just so happy to be home, with my family, having a blast. But it was roomier, none the less. It really isn't as bad as I make it sound, but if you are a neat freak like me, entering the front doors is like a panic attack waiting to happen. At any rate my mother would be mortified if she found out that I was blogging about this, so do me a favor and keep it to yourself interwebs.

1 comment:

Shannah @ Just Us Four said...

Maybe it is a 757 thing because this sounds so much like my parents! My mom has an entire room dedicated to her shopping because her walk-in closet (the size of a powder room at least!) is already full of clothes and shopping bags. I keep trying to explain that we don't visit often because I have no place for my kids to sleep! Good luck...its a long hard road to breaking that mindset.