Order and disorder and some insights from Lucy

 

 

There is a classic episode of "I Love Lucy" in which Lucy and Ethel get jobs at a chocolate factory. It is their responsibility to place chocolates moving along a conveyor belt into candy boxes. Everything is going along fine at first, and then gradually problems start to come up. The belt moves faster, there are problems with the boxes and the chocolates, and the two women can not keep up. They start throwing chocolates in the boxes, shoving them in the pockets of their aprons and even cramming them in their mouths to get them out of the way. I don't know how the episode ends.

I can relate very easily to that story. The last little while as we have been involved in a prolonged remodel, the house has been in various stages of disorder. While I'd like to use the remodeling as an excuse, the reality is that, over time the conveyor belt of life has brought more chocolates to me than I have been able to deal with. I think Lucy and Ethel could have controlled the speed of the conveyor belt just as I could have done with the events of my life, but being caught up in the pace I didn't see what was obvious.

When I was first married, we moved into a small two bedroom starter home. The only possessions we had were what had been in our small bedrooms in our parents' home and what we received for our wedding. We had a basement, two closets in the main bedroom and a guest room. We had no children. I was teaching school, but did all of my work there and didn't bring anything home. Every Saturday I put the chairs up on the kitchen table and washed and waxed the floor. I totally sterilized the bathroom and did all of the laundry, including changing the sheets. I wiped the shelves of the fridge and emptied the crumbs out of the toaster. The house was more sanitary than a hospital. I few months later we moved to a larger, three bedroom home. Shortly afterward, I had my first child, Robbie. With that one child, suddenly it seemed like we quadrupled our possessions. We got a bassinet, crib, dresser, diaper pail, car seat, carrier, swing, playpen, diapers, pins, plastic pants, special laundry detergent, bottles, pacifiers, stacks of blankets, etc. I was still able to keep a handle on everything and life was so nice. I relished taking care of my little boy and husband. I got into a good routine and felt like I had too much time on my hand s. After all, I had been teaching school and giving music lessons before Robbie, so I felt like I was kind of wasting a lot of time. I added more music students and filled up the afternoons and early evenings with lessons. I still had plenty of time during the day to wash and clean and play with my baby. I dutifully boxed up his out grown clothes and carefully labeled them with gender, size and season. Two years later our second child, Sherrie, made her entrance. We were thrilled to have a little girl, and promptly set about getting frilly baby things as many of what we used with Robbie wouldn't work. Fortunately, we had gotten many gender neutral accessories so we didn't have to buy ALL new things. As she grew, I carefully boxed away her outgrown items. Three years later a third child, another girl, Jennie came along. She was born in March and Sherrie was born in May so not all of Sherrie's clothes could be handed down due to seasonal differences. We could use a lot of it, but still needed to get new things. I hated to dispose of all the rest, because we might have more children. Five years later, we did. Aimee joined our family. Even though I had packed so many clothes away, they were eight years old. I couldn't bear to part with them. I used some, packed the rest away and bought MORE new things.

Meanwhile, in addition to teaching piano and flute lessons, I was getting involved with the kids in sports and other activities. The schedule was getting full. I got fun things to decorate the house during the holidays. The conveyor belt was rolling along at a pretty good clip. We moved to a new and bigger house with lots of storage. It was easy to just put things on a shelf "for now'" until I could get to them. I never did. When Josh came along, his 13 year old brother was ecstatic to finally have a brother. I pulled out all of the little boy clothes. They worked for awhile, but eventually they ended up back in boxes on shelves, neatly folded and packed away. We moved one last time and brought it all with us. I needed time to sort and keep what was memorable and part with the rest. Time. That was in very short supply. Because there were empty closets and shelves, it was easy to put things out of the way until they could be dealt with. "Put it here for now" became my mantra – and my undoing.

And so, here I am today. I've stuffed all of the boxes and pockets and mouths with chocolates until there is no more space. Even the regularly scheduled hose keeping tasks are done irregularly because time and space have imploded. The emotional ties to baby clothes, old play programs and a key chain that might come in useful some day have bound my life. I don't have scrapbooks or well organized picture albums. (However, I dare say somewhere, in some room, closet or shelf there is some memorabilia of every event in all five children's lives.)

So I go on. The bathroom with color samples painted on one wall might get finished. When the new cabinets finally get in, I just might leave some shelves empty. They utility room might become just that and I might be able to do laundry in the laundry room and sew in the sewing room. Meri has seen to that. Jennie has been purging the food storage shelves so we won't die from the tomato sauce dated 1995. I hope to have the garden area looking nice and be more maintenance free this year. I do have to say, that it is productive. And, thanks to my hourly helpers, Aimee, Josh and Bryce, there aren't very many weeds in it. I'll wait until next year to put down the decorative rocks by the storage shed. In the meantime, help yourself to a chocolate

8/12/07