Wednesday, February 20, 2019

A Place for Everything, But Not Every Thing in Its Place


Here we have yet another photo of our nervous little cat not exactly sitting on the table. I mean, not directly. Her tail is clearly out of bounds, but thanks to Z leaving all her drawing things out, kitty has a nice little spot to occupy without being scolded. I did tell her to get down. She did...you know, later. When she felt like it. It's just that I feel very sorry for this cat, because she is so very nervous about everything. I imagine it's not very comfortable being her, so if she wants to sit on things which are set on the table, I am just not going to stop her. (Unless it's someone's plate.) Here I imagine that she is contemplating taking up figure drawing to calm her nerves.

Right. That's not what I came here to write about tonight. It's related though, as I am providing an example of one of the many little messes around our house. Behind the cat is our overflowing treat basket. I'm not sure why the leftover crackers from E's party are in there, but I'm just rolling with it, and with a lot of the other little messes that are everywhere at the moment. I put some things away, but I can't put everything away for all four of us, so I've ceased trying. It is also a bit onerous to try to get anyone else to put things away if I don't have a good reason for it, so I've given up.

This is not a bad thing. I've gotten things organized well enough that when there is a good reason to ask my family to put things away, it's not hard to do. Even if not everything is in its place, there is now a place for each thing to go, and it's fairly straightforward to just take things there. Things can get out of hand to the point that the quantity of things to be put away is overwhelming, but we've had a party recently enough that we're nowhere near Situation Critical. We are hosting children's vespers in a week and a half, and I am not concerned. We can get things put away quickly, everyone we know is used to the lack of attention to dusting in our house, and I am making the main dish in my crockpot, so even the food is sorted. Easy peasy.

Plus, I think there's a good argument to be made for leaving some things out. It's comfortable. I know that some people feel most at peace when everything is put away, neat as a pin, but for our family, having a few things out here and there makes it feel like we live here. Knowing that we can leave things out sometimes makes this feel like home instead of just a place to entertain the guests that only show up sporadically throughout the year. This is where we can relax. This is where we can be ourselves, not just the most polished versions of ourselves. So we've got some snacks stashed in weird places. There's a doll wearing sunglasses at the top of the stairs. I've got books tucked just under my side of the bed. There are shoes scattered throughout the whole house. This is home. So we let it be.

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