{Originally posted on Diary of an Unlikely Housewife.}

For someone so unadept at keeping house, I am surprisingly (some might say annoyingly) neurotic about organizing.

My computer files are organized in folders, sub-folders, sub-subfolders, so are my favorites. My spices are in alphabetical order, with the spice mixes all on one side, separate from the single spices. When I do my grocery shopping I place all produce in one bag, all frozen foods in a separate bag, all refrigerated foods in a third bag and all dry, canned and packaged foods in a fourth. And if I buy any beauty products or toiletries, they go in a small paper bag inside the dry foods bag.

Now, to me this just makes sense, because it makes putting stuff away a piece of cake, and avoiding leaving something that goes in the fridge at the bottom of a bag with dry stuff in it. Oh, who am I kidding? I’m weird. I am messy, I have to actually force myself to put things away every now and then just so I’ll be able to find them again, but if anyone helps me put stuff away, they HAVE to put it exactly where it belongs or it irritates me to no end. I should be thankful for any help I can get, right? Instead I prefer having no help to having to move things to the places where I think they belong.

My poor husband, who has been putting up with me for 11 years (I do have some good traits, you know), after almost 2 years in this house still doesn’t totally get where everything goes when the dishwasher is unloaded or the groceries are put away. To me it’s very simple: the burgundy plates on one pile on the lower shelf – next to them the lavender plates and then the everyday white plates. The Chinese tea set, the bowls and the Mayan-inspired dinner set on the middle shelf, the white porcelain dinner set and Croatian coffee set on the top shelf obviously, because they are only used for special occasions. What is so difficult about that?

Or the arrangement of pots and pans in the kitchen: frying pans in one pile, pots with one long handle in another, pots with 2 short handles in a third; lids on the higher shelf, baking dishes in the other cabinet (on the opposite side of the kitchen).

I don’t know, to me there is a logic to all this – but I guess it isn’t apparent to everyone. My friend K. thinks this is where my Virgo personality shows up, my mom thinks I’m just concentrating on the wrong things and thinks that I’m neurotic just for doing a weekly menu and shopping list, but understands some of the organizing points (and questions others). The only one who understands me is my cool aunt Rox, except it has always been sort of an in-joke in the family, how high-maintenance she is because she wants her things just so – so I’m not sure that her support gains me any points.

{Originally posted on Barking Mad.}

I had a linguistics professor who said that it’s man’s ability to use language that makes him the dominant species on the planet. That may be. But I think there’s one other thing that separates us from animals. We aren’t afraid of vacuum cleaners.” –Jeff Stilson

I knew it was too good to last. It’s been more than a year since I’ve had something go wrong with a domestic appliance, be it a personal hair remover or something not intended for use on the human body. Oh and this one doesn’t count because seriously, it could have happened to anyone! It could!

Yesterday wasn’t any different from most of my days spent around Casa Barking Mad, except that the Little Imp was at Montessori for the day and the groomer had come to pick up Casey after the discovery that the spawn of our neighbour, Creepy Whistling Dude, have been throwing shitloads of chewed gum into our backyard. Alas, a big-ass post about that is forthcoming. So whilst I was sitting here wondering if my dog was going to be returned with any hair or not, I decided to obsessively clean, like I normally do.

I’ll have you know, I have never suffered any sort of injury from a domestic appliance until now. I swear!

The culprit, a Dyson Animal…

{Originally posted on Catnip and Coffee.}

If you’ve read much of this blog, or if you know me irl, you are well aware that cleaning is my least favorite thing to do on the planet. Seriously. When I told DH I was going to be working on the Homemaking Channel for Blog Nosh Magazine he actually laughed and said “well, maybe you’ll learn something.” (Don’t condemn him, it’s no worse than I thought myself AND he helps around here way more than most husbands!)

Anyway, DH took the boy to t-ball awhile ago and I decided to stay home and try to accomplish something. Something immensely productive. I needed to clean the family room. This is the room where the boy and I spend most of our time during the day. Many of his toys and craft items are here, and my work stuff is all here. This fact will be important later – I work sitting in the middle of the couch with all my shit stuff spread out around me. (Mostly because my desk is too cluttered to actually work at. Sigh.) You might already know, but I am a freelance photo editor. That means I always have manuscripts, layouts, pens, highlighters, a water bottle, a coffee mug (well balanced of course), paper clips, date planner, etc. next to me at all times. Yeah, on the couch. It drives DH crazy because he can never come sit next to me. I digress.

I needed to clean because I have overnight company coming it was dirty. As I’m vacuuming it occurred to me that someone might need to sleep on the couch later this week, and god forbid someone might pull the cushions off of it. So I bit the bullet and decided to clean under the cushions. Oh. My. God.

Needless to say I am sitting on a very clean couch as I type this.

Confession time. Here is the horror list of what I found, not including Hershey Kisses wrappers just regular trash.

• Popsicle sticks. At least 20 of them. Now one or two and it wouldn’t haven’t even made the list. But 20?
• Pens, highlighters, markers. A good thirty or so total. This is the part where you say, “You dumb shit, you work sitting on your couch. What did you expect?”
• Crochet hooks. Three of them! This is why I stopped crocheting last winter, I couldn’t find any hooks.
• A pot holder. Yeah, really, a Christmas themed pot holder.
• White-Out. A whole bottle, luckily closed up tight.
• A cordless phone. (!) Apparently the back of the couch has this really deep area that I’ve never seen before. I’ve been looking for this phone for, well, let’s just say a long time. I’m trying to charge it up now, to see if it still works.