My Inner Neat Freak

I think I was excited for all of 24 hours. My room and house were finally bombed for roaches and ants. I was told to be out for six hours so I made the most of it. I left for the day to have lunch with friends and returned to the blissful stench of boric acid... or whatever it is that kills the crawly things. My room and house were bug free so what more could a girl want?

Being a dutiful tenant, I kept doors closed behind me, didn't leave food out, and repeatedly took out the trash when full. So image my surprise when today, a full twenty four hours later, I spy ants, yes ANTS plural, crawling along the walls of THE SECOND FLOOR HALLWAY WHERE I SLEEP. Let me just note a few crucial facts to help illustrate what is wrong with this picture. 1) I live in a two story house. 2) There are no entryways, food sources, etc on the second floor. And most importantly 3) THE COMMON AREAS WERE SUPPOSEDLY BOMBED FOR PESTS! So I'll ask calmly, what oh WHAT could ants be doing ON THE SECOND FLOOR?!!

I am not happy.

Interestingly enough this experience is teaching me a lot about myself. Growing up I was never a particularly neat child. Oh I was organized but neat was not one of the top 100 words one would use to describe me then. My brother tells me that it was rare to see clothes on hangers in my closet as a kid and in my teenage years it wasn't uncommon for my room to resemble the aftermath of an explosion. Don't get me wrong, I hated dirty places and spaces, but I just didn't like the effort it took to be tidy. I didn't see the point in hanging up a coat you're only going to put on again in a few hours. Not a surprisingly dishes and vaccuming were my least favorite chores. I believed that if you're going to do dishes, at least wait until you have a lot of them before you do them. That way you waste less water and time and get more done.

When I moved out in my twenties although my clothes and coats were now on hangers my habits had evolved to what I like to describe as a 'lived in' look. But I still had my messy moments and hated doing dishes. I was even saved from doing the latter thanks to well meaning boyfriends and family members that visited often and would rescue me from them. Don't get me wrong, I washed many dishes in my day. But if I had the option between doing them right away or waiting to have more than two things to wash before I did them, I'd prolong the inevitable.

The transformation came when I moved to Australia and was living in a dorm-like facility. The room was so tiny that should I choose to have a messy day, (a.k.a. when I was running late to a dinner date and left all the clothes I had to try on but decided not to wear all over my room), I didn't have the luxury of leaving them lying around more than a day unless I wanted to kill myself on the way to the bathroom. Or if I didn't feel like making my bed that morning, should I choose to leave it that way, when friends came to visit they would sit on my sheets and on occasion even crawl under the covers with shoes on! What really got me was the time I left my bed undone and a friend who had a really bad cold was visiting and started coughing and decided to use my comforter as a napkin. I learned to make my bed after that and always had tissues handy. But most importantly I learned that the best way to clean a mess is to prevent it from happening. If something was moved or taken out, I learned to put it back as soon as I was done. If there was something I had taken off and was going to use again the next day, it was better to hang it up lest I start a pile, which would then create more work.

All this was a bit annoying but I did it anyway. I didn't embrace it however until I was faced with the prospect of pests. When I moved to the place I'm in now, I immediately went on the preventative strike. If I didn't want to deal with ants, it was better to wash dishes right after I finished using them. If I didn't want them in my food cupboard, it was better to divide and ziplock all my food when I brought it home. If I didn't want to deal with bugs coming into the house, as inconvenient as it may be at a get together, I kept the door to the patio closed at all times.

It was during one such dishwashing however that I remembered my mom famously telling me to wash things as soon as I use them in order to have less work at the end. It used to bother me immensely to have to do that. I always thought that if you slaved away in the kitchen to make your food, you could at least enjoy it, relax, and then clean up the mess. But when recalling my moms words while joyfully performing the exact thing I used to hate, the truth of the phrase in 'The Day the Earth Stood Still,' hit me. "It's only at the brink that people find the will to change. Only at the precipice do we evolve." Who knew my precipice would be roaches?