Freesia Lane

I have a housekeeper now and again, whenever I’ve been so busy that I need to regroup.

That is such a lie. I have a housekeeper when I can’t stand it anymore, and my vow to clean a room a day has been broken fourteen days in a row, and I’m afraid someone will stop by and see the pig sty I call home. I’m exhausted from writing that last sentence. I am one person. Just how much mess can I make? Seriously.

Anyway, the point of this particular missive is that when the housekeeper is coming, I spend substantial time “preparing” for her arrival. God forbid she think my house was a mess before she got here. I seriously worry sometimes about my priorities. Why wouldn’t I want to put things away for my own sense of peace and pleasure? I’m the one who looks at it each day? Am I not as important to me as my housekeeper?

I think this is something I can work toward achieving. I think it doesn’t happen so much when you live with another person. Living alone makes it easy to think that putting your hair in a ponytail on a day when you are not leaving the house is the same thing as taking a shower. Or piling dishes in the sink when you are only using one or two a day means it takes a while before the sink looks full. I have a friend who lives alone and doesn’t cook. She told me that when she redid her kitchen, she looked for one of those deep sinks so she wouldn’t see the dishes in the sink until there were a lot of them. Then there is my friend Robin, who carpeted her kitchen in white to ensure that she would never cook in it. Just so you don’t think I only have like-minded friends, I’m sure my Aunt Molly, who is near and dear to my heart, does her dishes every single time one of them returns to the kitchen. I know this because she also cooks for herself as if she were cooking for a crowd — a party of one for dinner tonight. I personally am not like my Aunt Molly, but that doesn’t mean I don’t admire her attitude. She is as important to herself as a crowd of guests.

I do the same thing with my car. If I am picking someone up, you can bank on the fact that the Dunkin’ Donuts coffee with cream in the drink holder that has been there for — well, let’s just say it’s been there for awhile — will be thrown away and the inside of the car vacuumed. Whenever I do this, I’m always so happy I did. I love the way it smells. I love the way it feels. I love the way it looks. You don’t have to park far away from other cars if your car is neat and clean. You do not have to worry that if you arrive at the same time as the friend you are meeting for dinner, he or she is going to walk over to your car so you can walk in together.

Re-reading this, I can see that I may seem like one of those people on those hoarding shows that I can’t watch. I assure you this is not the case. It’s just a little problem. Not a big one, I promise. I have to go now, the housekeeper is arriving in one hour and I have a lot to do before she gets here.