There has got to be a drug for this...

Ever seen the movie "Misery" staring Cathy Bates? If you haven't then just skip ahead but if so, remember the scene where she walks into her house and notices that a certain figurine on display has been shifted ever so slightly and can deduce that her captive has been up and  moving about her house just by this subtle little detail? 

(If this is your favorite movie and that is not exactly what happened in the scene please excuse my error. I've only seen the flick a couple of times, years ago and didn't want to scour the internet looking for the exact rundown. Anyways the point isn't the entire scene just Bates' seemingly compulsive attention to detail. But I digress.)

Confession Time: I am THAT compulsive. If a detail, like the direction a photo frame is facing, which I so painstakingly placed in just the right place, is altered in the slightest I notice. I not only notice but the change strikes me immediately upon entering the room. It's like I do an internal scan of the room every time I walk in and all the sirens in my brain go off if everything isn't just so.

This is a problem.

Not so when I lived alone and didn't have to worry about anyone but myself.  Life was so orderly then. I rarely had to clean because no one ever messed things up.  There was no clutter. Everything was in it's proper place. I had my closet coordinated by color, season, and occasion. My shoes organized by type and season. I would wash my dish and cup immediately after eating. In fact I wouldn't even start eating until everything I had used to make my meal was put away and the tables and counters were neatly cleaned.  I would wake up each morning, jump out of the tiny side of the bed I had occupied for the night and pull the covers neatly down.  There wasn't a day that I didn't make my bed. If on some rare occasion I didn't,  I could not get into bed that night without first "making it" so that the every was nice and neat again. 

I would turn off the lights at night and breath a sigh of relief. Everything was right in my crazy OCD tinged little world.  Every detail was perfect. I felt in control of my life. 

I    AM    NOT     EVEN     KIDDING. 

As you would expect that is not the case today.

There are stacks. There is clutter. There are toys, toy pieces and miscellaneous scraps of construction paper scattered from room to room.  I'm lucky if the beds are made two days out of the week. The kitchen floor is sticky. The broken crayon pieces tucked into every random corner and opening number into the hundreds. The sticky baby fingerprints on the glass door have been there since the days the boys could actually be called babies. We currently do not park in the garage because it overflowing with boxes filled with things that do not currently have a home or a purpose.  We didn't wash our car the first year we owned it. All five of the closets in our house are a health hazard. My current method of dealing with them is to open the door just the slightest bit then quickly fling things in before everything comes tumbling out. There are dozens of shoes missing their partners. I currently own only one pair of socks as the rest have mysteriously disappeared. I can go months before discovering a shirt or jeans in my closet that is crammed full of clothing . I own at least three hundred pens most of which have so little ink left I could barely eek out my first name. 

Every night I go to bed and every object that is not in it's proper place screams out at me to come and make things right again. 

So I do. I  clean, pick up, tidy, straighten, declutter, organize and shine.

 

I get back into bed and feel slightly uneasy but at least I can sleep knowing that I've made some progress towards making things better.

The next morning the small children, whose sole purpose in life is to see me committed, literally hit the ground running towards everything that I worked so hard to make beautiful and destroy it in less than three minutes. They are little, smart, fast and they outnumber me. 

Max alone does the work of five toddlers. He pulls out every car, train, and truck in our home and scatters them from room to room like a damn bread crumb trail. Our budding artist, Sophia, cranks out at least twenty new pictures per day all of which end up piled on the refrigerator, stacked on the counter or crumpled on the floor. Sweet little Alex insists on pulling out every book from the shelves and baskets which are designed to neatly contain them and if that's not enough, he occasionally will like a particular page so much that he'll tear it out of the book and scatter tiny pieces of ripped paper everywhere .  I will spare my husband and not mention the wet towels, dirty socks, and sporadically placed spare coins that have more than once sent me over the edge. 

The sirens in my OCD brain are deafening. 

I realize I have options. I could stop caring. Let it overtake us and then just move to a new house, start over again.  Or we could live like the hoarders I see on TLC until someone finally sends in a camera crew, semi trailer and professional organizer.  I could get into my minivan (that perpetually reeks of crushed goldfish crackers and stale graham crackers), drive around until I find a car that is shiny, neat and smells good, break into that car and drive away.  Or I could throw the little ones out and get a new husband. One that is sterile. 

Okay, okay. So I exaggerate. There will be no homeless children, new husbands or grand theft auto charges in my future. Just lots of deep breathing, praying for patience, and perhaps a well deserved glass of wine at the end of my day. 

That and the singular thought that one day my babies will be grown. My house will once again grow quiet, orderly and clean. I will feel in control again . And I will without a doubt be willing to give up all that serene perfection to regain a home full of the loud, crazy, disorderly people who I love.