Husband-ry
Remember the episode of Friends in which Ross dates the "Dirty Girl"--I assume meant to be a double entendre.
The hamster is loose, and Ross sees movement in the chip bag, and he starts wailing away at it with a tennis racket. The Dirty Girl is alarmed, until she looks inside and sees that it's a rat! Whew!
Dirty Girl is hot (duh), but Ross can't stand the mess. Joey says, "Just have sex on all the garbage!" Ross can't.
Monica shows up later and volunteers to clean up Dirty Girl's mess. Dirty Girl slams the door on Clean Girl.
When I went looking for images of men and clutter, there were very few. But there were many images of hot men and neat desks, except for Einstein's. His hair flying everywhere, he asks, "If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, what is an empty desk a sign of?"
As with many other things--being loud, aggressive, a distracted parent, fat, a whiskey or two before dinner, promiscuous, and on and on--it's not so bad if men do it, but if a woman does it?
If women are sloppy, if our rooms and houses are cluttered. Then we have failed big time, as a woman, mother, sister. But men. Well, Einstein, what do you think?
I used to be a college professor. Recall the stereotype of the "absent-minded professor." Male, of course. Hair unkempt (Einstein), pipe tobacco spilling down the front of his jacket, leather patches on the elbows of his tweed jacket, which has not been cleaned in decades. No tie, really, but if there is a tie, there's mustard stains or egg yolk dribbled down the front.
Our professor has more important things to do, to think about, than personal hygiene. In fact, the mustard is a badge of honor. Grey Poupon, of course, not Stadium Yellow.
I am not a clean-freak, a decluttering freak, as has been obvious in this blog.
But it has been a challenge, to say the least, to co-exist with my husband who is one of the most disorganized people I know, and will not get rid of anything, especially anything PAPER.
Before I start my rant, please know that I love him. We have had three wonderful children together. We have been married going on 36 years. We share the same values and politics. He was a bit more conservative than I when we married, but has shifted thankfully further to the left.
So. Paper.
As a society, we were promised that computers would usher in a new world order, a paperless society. This has happened to an extent. But not in the slightest with my husband.
He loves the internet. He goes on-line every morning--Washington Post, New York Times, you name it. He reads scores of articles.
Then prints every one.
He subscribes to lots of journals and magazines, like the New Yorker, Atlantic, and rags like New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, the Catholic Worker, National Catholic Reporter. He pores over the articles, and when finished . . . well, there is no "finished." He saves every one. Magazines and papers are stacked in high piles in his bedroom. (We have separate bedrooms, though we love each other. You can understand why.)
He cleaned out the magazines once, when there was an avalanche, and we had to send the Saint Bernards in with their rescue Earl Grey tea.
My husband was once a professor, too. And is a minister. He takes copious notes whenever anyone mentions something the very least bit interesting. An idea, a movie, a TV show, a play, a beautiful place to visit, a hum-drum place to visit, a museum, and so on. Copious notes, on slips of paper, used envelopes, napkins, post-its, grocery lists . . . . And these pile up, too. When I use the fan in the summer, these notes flutter into the air and down to the ground, like flurries of giant snowflakes, to be picked up one by one before the ideas melt under our muddy shoes.
For years, I turned over in my mind WHY? until I thought my head would explode. Why does he save all this paper? Is it that he feels he must hoard knowledge? If the article leaves his sight, will he no longer know it--possess the ideas?
Finally, I decided, it doesn't matter why. In contemplating the why, what I was really trying to do was find the answer so that I could fix him. It was (is) not my place to fix him.
My husband is a disorganized clutterer in other ways. A cleared table or desk top is an invitation to more paper or pens or mail or a used coffee cup, or the broken mug that may or may not get glued back together one day. My husband uses the top of our freezer as a work bench, the top of the washing machine as the spot to mix his paint, or cut a quarter round with the mitre saw, or arrange his tools, which never get put away because he's going to go back to that project any day. But like the mug, the project and the tools languish, until I sort it out and put it all away.
This all has something to do with Stuff Stream as an organizing strategy.
Over the 36 years, we have agreed to co-exist. We each have our own bedrooms, our own computers and work spaces. Certain rooms are my space, certain rooms his. I have a storage room. So does he. His looks like this:
I've tried to go into his spaces over the years to organize and throw stuff out. But that is disrespectful, really. Presumptuous.
So we have designated spots where I throw his stuff--papers, book bags, a thousand cranes of notes to self, books, magazines--not throw really, place, pile, jumble together. If something is somewhere it shouldn't be--the dissertation with paint splotches on it on the freezer, or hundreds of pages of music for his Elder Collegium on the washing machine--I don't even look to see what it is, much less sort it. I just pick it up and put it over there on his couch in his AcademicMan cave, or on the table next to his computer. (I have my own computer) It is all for him to sort through, or not. And this is all downstairs where I don't have to look at it.
So. Ross.
As Joey said to Ross, "Just have sex on the garbage." Oh, the shimmering worlds of garbage you might bear!
Comments
Post a Comment