Day Twenty-Three of Lent-A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place

I've always been a person of order. There's a place for everything and everything has it's place. If you ask me where something is in my house, I can tell you exactly where it is (unless someone else has moved it in the last day or two and I haven't discovered it's out of place). Okay, I admit it. I'm obsessed with having things in life orderly. When I am too busy to get the house cleaned during the week and the whole family joins in on Saturday, I almost go into meltdown mode if we don't do things in 'order'. Start at the ceilings and work your way to the floors. Isn't that how everyone cleans?

When I was younger the kitchen in our house was one of the places that kept me most perplexed. I wasn't the only one who had to empty the dishwasher so dishes weren't always returned to their 'correct' home. Every so often I would take all the dishes out of the cabinets, wipe them out and then put them into their proper homes with great thought and care. The only problem is not everyone thought the cups should be stacked a certain way or the plates and bowls be arranged in a certain order—so within weeks the whole kitchen would be in disarray again. Nothing drove me more crazy.

When I got married I would use label maker and label the shelves in our cabinets so that Tim would know exactly where things went when he helped empty the dishwasher. Tim was used to the motto of a place for everything and everything in its place so this quirky obsession of mine didn't bother him much. When friends would come over and see this, um, trait of mine, many would find all sorts of one liners and jokes to needle me. Many of them never got invited back again. *wink

When I had children, the teaching (or indoctrination) continued with our girls and an extra motto was added to my mantra, don't put it down, put it away. (thank you Donna Otto!) If their rooms were a disaster and they couldn't find something, I simply stated if they'd put things back where they belonged they wouldn't be lost. To which one might reply, “I didn't lose it, I just can't find it.” Honestly, is there a difference? Amazingly, their rooms are pretty well organized as teenagers and for the most part clean. I thank Tim for encouraging me not to nag them about keeping it what we call 'mom clean'. He was right. When they didn't clean it and couldn't find things they remembered our admonition and viola, cleaned their rooms!

Now that I am older I try very, very, very hard not to stress about keeping things in order. IF there is a little bit of dust in the house it's okay--it's protection for the furniture, right? IF the family wants to help me clean the house on Saturday – its still clean even if they did it wrong, right? However, when it comes to my kitchen, I'm still a stickler for keeping things where they belong (although I have done away with the label maker). By now, everyone in the family knows where the items go! I guess that is part of being flexible in life. I know I need to be a little more flexible in this area but for now I will work on stretching a bit further each day and try not to tense up when things don't go my way.