Paring Down and Tidying Up: Mismatched Pairs

That's okay, honey. You go ahead and move through the house like a whirling dervish, making every room appear (at a glance) tidy. I'm going to sit here and painstakingly excavate every single item from this junk drawer, and then put each thing where it belongs. I'll see you in two hours.

My husband and I have Very. Different. Cleaning. Styles. One would think that we would complement each other beautifully, me with my toothbrush and bleach, tackling the grout, and he with his damp rag, doing a quick pass over every surface in the house. One would be mistaken. I appreciate his efforts, but *snif!* he seems not to appreciate mine.

I think what drives Husband so crazy is not that I tackle things like the junk drawer, or the kids' Lost Toy Pieces bin, but rather that I can even consider doing these things when there's a cup and a half of edamame beans on the floor surrounding our toddler's high chair, drips of soup on the floor next to the stove, and a sink full of dishes needing to be done. Why is NOW a time for me to expend my cleaning and tidying energy on something so non-urgent and detail-oriented and so easy to put off til another day?

For me, I know I'll get to those things eventually, even if it's eleven o'clock at night: the sweeping of the floor, the mopping, the dishes. Or, he will. Or, we'll knock them out together. But, if I don't pounce on that junk drawer Right Now when I get the fire in the belly to do so, it might be another year or two that I'm stirring it up ever time I want to find some small item in there. And frankly, it's been driving me a little bit crazy for two months now, and it's the weekend, and the kids have two of us to tend to them, and so damn it, I'm going to knock that junk drawer reorganization out right this minute. That's why I step over the edamame beans.

Case in point: One day, I decided to reorganize the linen closet, when there were four loads of laundry that needed to be folded and put away, dishes to be done, and dinner to be cooked. Husband knows how to fold, put away, and cook, and those tasks called to him, so he did them. Over an hour and a half later, I was just finishing up the linen closet, and he was fuming. "Look at all the stuff I've done in the past two hours," he vented, "And you're still in the linen closet. I resent having to do all the broad stroke cleaning and tidying around here!"

I was still in the linen closet, it's true. And when I emerged, I saw that he had picked up everything on the living room floor, the coffee table, the kitchen table, the counters. He had done the dishes, he had folded the laundry, and dinner was cooking. The place looked great. It smelled great. I was delighted. Husband, on the other hand? Not so delighted.

I showed him what I had done: removed everything from the linen closet, refolded every towel, every washcloth, every blanket. I figured out how to fold everything (Shall I start with a half fold? or a one-third fold?) to make it fit in its "spot" and I then took my electronic label maker and actually labeled the shelves, "twin fitted and flat," "queen fitted," "queen flat," "matching towels," "non-matching towels." I also removed and sorted all five lidded bins of stuff from the bottom and top shelves, tossed what wasn't needed, and organized what we'd keep. Those bins got labeled, too. I got inspired, so halfway through this project, I took on the vanity cabinet in the adjacent bathroom, too. When I was done, it looked incredible. I could find everything. HE could find everything. Everything had a place. And for these five minutes, at least, everything was IN its place.

Yes, I'm slow and methodical in my organizing efforts. Yes, I have a weird sense of timing, taking on an organizing project when the house is messy and dirty. But you know what? That linen closet project was one year ago, and it has stayed completely, perfectly, beautifully tidy and organized ever since. Mind you, we used to have the kind of linen closet that required an upturned forearm over your head, bracing you from the avalanche, when you opened its door. But no more, baby. Now we have Linen Closet Bliss. After all the energy that it took to create this system, we both just immediately began respecting the labels, and the uniformly folded stacks of towels, like goes with like. Husband sighs approvingly on a regular basis when he goes to retrieve something from the linen closet. It really is nice to have perfect order, even if only in a few places in the house. (And more places are being added to the "in perfect order" list each month, whenever the mood strikes me to take on a big re-org job...) Maintaining this order in the linen closet hasn't taken more than an extra few seconds each time we do laundry. But creating the system of organization? Yeah, that took a chunk of time.

Was it worth it? I think at this point we would both agree that it has been. Two hours of him being pissed off and me "shirking" my "real" cleaning duties while he toiled away... Or, two hours of me doing my kind of weekend cleaning, while he did a turbo fast version of the kind of tidying I do all workweek long. Depending on how you look at it. : ) But, even though we are both glad to have a place for everything, and everything (usually) in its linen closet place, Husband still bristles on the weekends when he's doing his cleaning whirlwind thing, and when I'm rearranging my sock drawer. Tomorrow I'll post more about why.

Later in the week I'm going to post some ideas for how to overcome major cleaning and tidying style differences, how to better understand each other's foreign approaches, and how to begin to help those differences become complementary instead of conflicting. I look forward to your questions and ideas, too!