To Clean or Not to Clean

There are few things in life that are more difficult for me than keeping my office/home uncluttered and tidy. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a slob, really, I just hate never-ending tasks like cleaning up, doing laundry, and washing dishes. Whenever I get frustrated though, I stop and remind myself it could be worse. I could still be in college.

My first roommate in college was so messy you literally couldn't see the floor on her side of the room. She had a pile of clean clothes in the closet (nothing on the clothes hangers), and many piles of dirty clothes. When her mess would start to migrate to my side of the room, I just pushed it all back over to her side. By the end of the term her piles were up to the same level as her bed, which couldn't be seen.

Another roommate wasn't quite that messy, but when she moved out, I found a piece of pizza (face-down), two apple cores (rotten), and half a bagel with very fuzzy cream cheese (bleu) under her bed. Fortunately we didn't have roaches. Yet.

The next year I moved into an apartment on campus with two other young women. Our upstairs neighbors were so messy that the campus housing authority forced them to move off campus and according to rumor made them pay for new carpeting as well as for the exterminator to come spray for the cockroaches that were now infesting their apartment. Guess where all the roaches moved? That's right. Downstairs.

After two months and three work requests to campus maintenance, they finally sent a guy to spray the bugs. He took one look, went rather green, and went back without spraying anything. "Uh... I think we need a professional here." I think it was the cupboard we showed him that was moving on the inside that did him in. The professional exterminator told us that in 25 years he had never seen a nest that size in an apartment... I hate to see what the place upstairs looked like. They ended up having to spray every apartment in the building eventually. I still get the shudders just thinking about it. blech.

I took pictures (sadly lost to time) of these various messes* for my mom so I could say "See, I'm actually not all that messy!" She would just laugh and say "Turn-about is fair play!" sigh.

*Except for the roach nest -I wasn't about to get close enough to those things to take a picture. ick.