It's funny, I'm trying to think back upon when I started to need such order in a house that it came to a level, of neurosis. I know that in high school this wasn't going on. Most of the time my school uniforms lay in heaps of navy blue wool, all over my room. The logic being, that it saved time because I only had to swing my legs out of bed and into my skirt. See? efficiency! It was the same sort of logic that brought me, 'Why make your bed, when you're only going to mess it up at bed time!"
I think something happened around the time I moved into a sorority and lived with 3 girls in one room. You touched anything on my dresser, you were dead. I knew if you 'borrowed' a bit of my perfume, or picked up a framed party pic to get a closer look. God. I must have been a nightmare. Amazing that these girls are still my closest friends. Don't even get me started on living with babies and all of the plastic, primary crap that comes with or my daughter who is by nature a ball of explosive creativity leaving behind messes of mass proportion as she goes through the house or my very masculine, 'boy' of a husband.
In order not to end up in a fetal position, rocking in a corner, I've had to come to grips with the reality that, "A Perfectly Kept House is the Sign of A Misspent Life". It's been a hard program to stay with, and one day at a time is chanted often as I give it up to my higher domestic power.
Mary Randolph Carter, celebrates a house that is both beautiful and lived in. Her book A Perfectly Kept House is the Sign of A Misspent Life, records this mantra through beautiful photographs that are both encouraging and inspiring. "Don’t scrub the soul out of your home"; "Make room for what you love". I know I'm not completely 'there' yet, because although pretty, a few of the shots from this book make me itch.
{ this book's been out for a few years and its been covered 'round these parts. But like most things, it made its self known to me during a particular day of weakness, when I really needed to be reminded of this }