I used to be a wild mess of rude fun. And then I got money&alcohol-tired, married, babied and suburbanized. Look, this was all by my own doing. I thought I ought to try it, and I thought I would be good at it. i seriously thought that le kid needed a house and that was all there was to it. I even subconciously bought a house that was a jumbled replica of the house I grew up in. And honestly thought these massive life changes would have no other bearing on me other than shelter and keeping social services off my scent. In my mind le kid would just be my plus+one and I would go back to drunkenly arting it up all over dirtcity and eventually beyond.
well, FUCK.
APPARENTLY, my fucking mother wasn't just some obsessed with interior redesign, food prep and cleanliness Pollyanna from the fucking 50's. APPARENTLY, if you do not get into keeping your house clean and your family properly fed- things get BAD. Like you have to hustle all this shit into some kind of organized and operational system or everyone gets SICK and your nonofficial job as the keeper of your peeps gets shittier and shittier. Like if you thought you had no time to yourself just doing regular keep em alive shit, when everyone is sick INCLUDING YOU, your life is a hotter hell. you cry. A lot. And Mama Pollyanna's words of advice that always start with "Ok- what ya gotta do is go to the butcher and get a hambone..." just push me over the EDGE. I am drowning in chaos and you want me to MAKE SOUP?!?!
When the realization hit me of what it would take for a no structure, not tidy, no cookin party girl like me to pull this off? No word of a lie- I was MEGGA PISSED. I mentally kissed my own ass goodbye and started trying to rebuild everything about how I did things.
HOT TIP #1 Find your scizzors. Call a meeting. Fire half of them.
I have a hoarding problem. i didn't KNOW I had a hoarding problem till i watched Hoarders and realized that under the umbrella of "Future Possible Art Projects" I was glomming on to all sorts of crap. one shrink on the show asked some looner if he didn't think that collecting handyman tools was a way to define himself as a handyman without ever having to DO anything with them. That hit HARD. I am tellin ya- watch hoarders and then grab a garbage bag and stomp around your house with an air of superiority & disgust. you will be amazed at what gets chucked. Then close the bag and chuck it. NEVER REOPEN THE BAG. This may require booze.
I started by clearing off EVERY offending surface and dumping it all on one table. These are all the things that do not have proper homes in your world. It seemed so simple: just put everything that's the same TOGETHER. So the first thing I realized is that I have a thing for scizzors and they were EVERYWHERE. This brought me to the startling fact that i owned 57 pairs of scizzors. holyshit. WHAT THE FUCK DO I NEED 57 PAIRS OF SCIZZORS FOR? Once you see them all together you realize you have a frickin problemmo. This goes for pens, Jiffy markers, hair ties, lipglosses, notepads, staplers, tupperware, etcetc. Everyone has these things that they duplicate and place all over their living space because they are terrified about being without one. Now, pretend your house is burning down- save the 1/2 of your babies that deserve to live- and slide the rest into a donation bag OR, if you're tipsy and feelin brave- right into the garbola. I call this game Sophie's Choice- one can live but the other must die. it is seriously LIBERATING. Now you must admit you have a scizzors problem and NEVER bring one home again. When you are testing that snazzy pair in the dollar store you must flash back to your pile at home and proudly chuck em' back onto the shelf. Fuck you scizzors, you space stealing time stealing motherfucker. We are DONE.
Now pat yourself on the back and uncork something. Baby steps, bitches.
