Age-Old Battle
Are you married to a messy? I think it’s one of life’s age-old battles, the messy married to the neat freak; I can picture Eve in some sort of makeshift tent (is that what they lived in back then?), asking Adam for the umpteenth time to leave his sandals outside of the tent. So I’m the neat freak, and he’s the messy. It used to bug me WAY more when we first married than it does now; I’ve been immunized to his piles for awhile. It’s probably good for me, really. It’s a little bit of get-rid-of-your-OCD-neatness training. It has also prepared me for motherhood; I don’t think I need to say much more about that; it pretty much speaks for itself.
So aside from the everyday leaving of used household items wherever he happens to be -- his clothes, his socks and underwear, whatever magazine he picked up to read last night, cereal boxes still sitting on the counter, waiting to be put back in the cupboard, the used towel on the closet floor, a blanket he uses every morning on the couch, which I sometimes get to fold several times a day -- my messy is also apparently afraid of throwing anything away. I mean anything. Junk mail is often left sitting around until I come along and make the bold move of throwing it away. Underwear will boast gaping holes sometimes for months until I finally take a second look at them during the folding and sneak them to the trash. Boxes of items we've just purchased, especially electronics, are saved for years. I know it’s good to save these little guys for awhile, in case the item ends up breaking, but years? The funny thing, too, is that after a few months, we forget we have the box, since it’s been stowed somewhere up high in the rafters of the garage, so it doesn’t do much good keeping it in the first place.
The messy also comes out in cyberspace. He saves various documents directly to the computer desktop, not to a folder, the four-dimensional equivalent of leaving stacks of paper all over the desk. Folders of any sort are foreign instruments for my guy. So I tend to spend late hours at night every couple of months going in and organizing all of the cluttered desktop files, which are covering the beautiful family photo in the background, and tuck them neatly away in folders, hidden somewhere else in the drawers of our computer, much like I do his clothes and books.
The DVR is another area that manifests his fear of the trash can. We should have 150 hours of recording time; however, because he doesn’t delete things after they are watched (this is autonomic for me), they remain on the DVR for months, even years, until I come in and go through them and figure out what can go and what needs to stay. So consequently, we had around 13 hours left of recording time (until I went in this morning and deleted another 20 hours).
Receipts are about the only thing he forgets to keep, usually due to neglect, and this is unfortunate. We often buy something for home repair, and it goes unused, or we find it isn’t needed for a particular project, so we go to return it to Lowe’s or Home Depot, and we have to take a store credit. I think this might be intentional on his part, since he LOVES to shop at these home improvement stores. Losing the receipt enables him to maintain an ongoing, unused balance, a veritable never-ending spending spree.
The messy side of him is probably his worst flaw, so I can’t complain too much. He’s a very laid back, gentle man who rarely loses his patience with his family, and he sees the big picture pretty clearly, often juggling multiple large projects at once, never getting uptight or overwhelmed about whether or not they’re finished, for leaving them unfinished goes along with the rest of his laid back, messy style.
For this messy, life is for enjoyment. Projects are completed according to his availability, his priorities, time spent with his loved ones. People are more important than order. Order doesn't run his life.
I guess this neat-nick can learn to battle less with this messy (or complain a little less about cleaning up after him).
So aside from the everyday leaving of used household items wherever he happens to be -- his clothes, his socks and underwear, whatever magazine he picked up to read last night, cereal boxes still sitting on the counter, waiting to be put back in the cupboard, the used towel on the closet floor, a blanket he uses every morning on the couch, which I sometimes get to fold several times a day -- my messy is also apparently afraid of throwing anything away. I mean anything. Junk mail is often left sitting around until I come along and make the bold move of throwing it away. Underwear will boast gaping holes sometimes for months until I finally take a second look at them during the folding and sneak them to the trash. Boxes of items we've just purchased, especially electronics, are saved for years. I know it’s good to save these little guys for awhile, in case the item ends up breaking, but years? The funny thing, too, is that after a few months, we forget we have the box, since it’s been stowed somewhere up high in the rafters of the garage, so it doesn’t do much good keeping it in the first place.
The messy also comes out in cyberspace. He saves various documents directly to the computer desktop, not to a folder, the four-dimensional equivalent of leaving stacks of paper all over the desk. Folders of any sort are foreign instruments for my guy. So I tend to spend late hours at night every couple of months going in and organizing all of the cluttered desktop files, which are covering the beautiful family photo in the background, and tuck them neatly away in folders, hidden somewhere else in the drawers of our computer, much like I do his clothes and books.
The DVR is another area that manifests his fear of the trash can. We should have 150 hours of recording time; however, because he doesn’t delete things after they are watched (this is autonomic for me), they remain on the DVR for months, even years, until I come in and go through them and figure out what can go and what needs to stay. So consequently, we had around 13 hours left of recording time (until I went in this morning and deleted another 20 hours).
Receipts are about the only thing he forgets to keep, usually due to neglect, and this is unfortunate. We often buy something for home repair, and it goes unused, or we find it isn’t needed for a particular project, so we go to return it to Lowe’s or Home Depot, and we have to take a store credit. I think this might be intentional on his part, since he LOVES to shop at these home improvement stores. Losing the receipt enables him to maintain an ongoing, unused balance, a veritable never-ending spending spree.
The messy side of him is probably his worst flaw, so I can’t complain too much. He’s a very laid back, gentle man who rarely loses his patience with his family, and he sees the big picture pretty clearly, often juggling multiple large projects at once, never getting uptight or overwhelmed about whether or not they’re finished, for leaving them unfinished goes along with the rest of his laid back, messy style.
For this messy, life is for enjoyment. Projects are completed according to his availability, his priorities, time spent with his loved ones. People are more important than order. Order doesn't run his life.
I guess this neat-nick can learn to battle less with this messy (or complain a little less about cleaning up after him).
Comments
I think it is too funny that receipts are the ONE thing he doesn't keep. Hmmmmm???
It's so good to realize that that messy side has it's good points. How could these men live with us if they weren't so easy-going??
One hopeful thought: Heaven WILL be a beautifully organized place. I just know it.
Mom: We think alike. I was just telling Dad that today, "I think God is definitely a God of order, or He wouldn't have created some of us this way. But He also must have a laid back side -- can't really refer to Him as a messy -- or He wouldn't have created people like my husband. :)
Yes, I agree; heaven will be wonderfully organized, but also very relaxed and peaceful (so ANTI-neatnick, huh?).