Neat Versus Sloppy

The Life of a Neat Freak

Growing up my parents were best described as weird and strange, then they had me. We all have
our quirks; in my family it’s a definite “s” at the end of quirk. It’s more of a “quirkssss.” For the
sake of this essay we will talk about being a NEAT FREAK.

My daddy is really into organization. I suppose he has to be. He owns a business. He used to
own more than one, oy! Then there’s my mama, she’s clean and mostly organized. I suppose I
should mention I have two sisters. Here we have a kinda clean and very sloppy. That’s our
house in a nutshell.

We actually had a maid growing up. She cleaned the whole house except for my bedroom. She
cleaned my bathroom but when she left I cleaned over her. Yup- I’m the neat freak. Just
because I’m a neat freak doesn’t mean I’m as organized as I would like, or as you might think. I
have lots of tchotchkes, mostly Disney characters. I dust each one separately. I put them back
carefully where they belong. My bookshelves are loaded with books put together by genre,
author, in alphabetical order. My closet is organized by color and length. In “Neat versus Sloppy People,” Ms. Suzanne Britt says that neat people, “have a cavalier attitude towards
possessions including family heirlooms. Everything is just another dust catcher to them.” She
goes on to explain, “If anything collects dust, it’s got to go and that’s that.” Apparently, I beg to differ.

So where is my dysfunction? Time. I’m forever running late and where are my shoes? Never mind asking my mama, all she answers is, “Let’s see, last time I wore them where did I leave them?” Not much help there.

So that was then back when I was growing up. What about now you ask? I married a slob and we have two slobby children. I dust, vacuum, clean the bathrooms and kitchen and keep up with the laundry daily. We have several shoe piles, boxes of stuff everywhere. We basically live in a storage unit. Our house is a clean mess.