The Tidy Gene: Does It Exist & Where Can I Get One?

I would be posting pictures for you right now if I could. And I could be posting pictures right now if the cable that leads from my camera to my computer would show up. However, since I rarely put things where they belong and, in fact, many things in our house don't even have places where they belong (the cable does) I can't find it.

That's the bad thing about being messy. You can't find things when you need them. I wrote about being messy here last year, quoting the New York Times article, Saying Yes to Mess, by Penelope Green: "Studies are piling up that show that messy desks are the vivid signatures of people with creative, limber minds (who reap higher salaries than those with neat “office landscapes”) and that messy closet owners are probably better parents and nicer and cooler than their tidier counterparts." 

But, in the end does it really matter if I'm cooler, nicer, or a better parent than the next person if I can't find the things I need to live my life!? Maybe not. 

And how does my high tolerance for clutter (how's that for a positive spin?!) affect Jerry? How much of a person's personal habits are genetic and how much are learned? Jerry's got a 50/50 chance of being reasonably tidy if it's genetics because he's just as likely to have received Warren's "neat freak" genes as he is my "complete and utter chaos" genes. But Jerry spends most of his time with me. I'm setting the primary example. And it's not a very tidy one.

If you could see Jerry's playroom (and I'd post a photo if only--well, you know) you'd say he takes after me--no doubt. Let me describe it for you. Okay, I'm sitting in the doorway now. To my right are overflowing boxes (I think those might be mine), Lego train pieces are scattered across the floor, a plastic bin with hot wheels tracks is on top of a bean bag chair. There are two desks--one for painting and one for writing--neither of which has any room for either of those activities. To my left is a plastic basket (that's mine) with stuff left over from--hey! There's my camera cable! Yippee! I found it! Okay, I'm going to post some pictures of his playroom. Brace yourselves.

So did he get my genes or is he following my example? By not being orderly myself and not requiring a certain amount of order from Jerry, am I setting him up for a lifetime of lost camera cables and keys? Or am I accepting him for who he is? And if I could bring myself to, say, help him clean his playroom each night before bed, would that start a habit that he would carry into adulthood or would it just make our evenings stressful? My own mother certainly did her best to instill those habits in me, but apparently it was a wasted effort.

What's a messy mother to do? 

Our Theme Song

We started our preparations for leaving town yesterday and since my house is a complete disaster, our main task is to clean up. Jerry's play room is--I don't think there's a word to describe it, now that I think about it. Disaster doesn't quite do it justice. I would post a photograph but then you would be able to see for yourselves how much stuff he has and it would be way too embarrassing. He has parents with a severe lack of restraint when it comes to buying stuff for their one and only. Of course, he can't play with most of it because he can't find it. So, last night we started with his War Hammer painting station. We cleared, cleaned, trashed, organized and sorted. It looks lovely now. We're going to do a small portion of the play room each day so it will be nice and orderly by the time we leave. And then of course, there's the rest of the house, which is better than the playroom, but that's not saying much. That's why I have chosen this as our theme song for the next two weeks:

Sing it with me! Pick it up, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up!

A Revelation (& Some Poetry)

I'm gearing up to start a teeny bit of "teaching." Not a huge amount. Just enough to make my husband relax a bit. We all have to be okay with what's happening in our house and at this point Warren is having some doubts about the whole child-led learning thing. I'm not quite ready to break out the workbooks, but I did order the "I Hate Mathematics Book" and I bought what looks like a really cool science book with some history thrown in called--shoot, I can't find it. That's the down side of being messy. You can never find anything when you need it. Anyway, the book is all about great inventions throughout history, who invented them and why, and it gives you instructions on how to create the inventions yourself. There's a pottery wheel, a trebuchet, vegetable dye...it looks really fun.

The reason I'm not jumping right in, though, is that I want it to feel kind of organic. I'm not sure if that's possible since organic would be coming from Jerry. I'm trying to devise a plan that will make it seem organic, at least--maybe even make it seem like Jerry's idea. But, before I start that I really think I should write out my educational philosophy. I know. I know. I said I was going to do that weeks ago. I'm procrastinating.

Why am I procrastinating? I think I'm kind of scared. Dumb, huh? I mean, I've already chosen homeschooling, then I went even further outside the norm and decided to try unschooling, so it's clear I'm taking my own path but writing down my educational philosophy will mean that I have to own it. It will mean that I'm not going by what other people are telling me is "right."

Oh my God! I've just had a revelation! I went from doing what the Waldorf school said was right, directly into doing what the unschoolers say is right. So I'm comfortable being told what to do because that's the usual way of life. The "experts" give their opinions, tell you what you need to do, and you do it--at least I do. So this whole time I thought I was such an individual, but really I just went from following one (not so mainstream) set of rules to following another (even less mainstream) set of rules. Sure, they weren't rules the majority of people in the US were following, but they were still rules. Wow! That explains my fixation with unschooling the "right" way. This is fascinating! I've been a follower for so long, that even though I'm on the road not (or less) taken I'm busy trying to step into someone else's footprints. Wow! I have to stop that!

Okay, here's the Robert Frost poem for some inspiration:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

So, for about the 500th time I'm telling myself to mellow out, and do what feels right to me. I guess I don't even really need to "gear up." It's okay if I don't know what's right immediately. It's okay if I don't have a plan. I can still move forward.

One of the reasons I felt the need to prepare for this teeny bit of teaching, though, is that I'm still unsure about the place of the computer and video games in our daily lives. Jerry likes to turn them on in the morning as soon as he wakes up, which I completely understand because I like to do the same thing. It helps me ease into the day. It also tends to suck the day away, if we're not careful. So maybe I won't wait until I "figure out" the screen thing before I make some changes. I'll start the teaching (facilitating? guiding?) slowly by showing him some of the books I bought, by doing some of the experiements with him, by continuing our mental math and maybe even writing some of it down. Maybe our daily rhythms will adjust on their own and I won't have to "gear up" for anything.

But I do have to figure out MY philosophy on education. That I'm sure of. I need to know what I believe, so I can stop trying to do what other people think is best. Okay. I'll do that but I won't wait until it's finished to start making small changes to our daily lives.

I'm going to end with another poem. This is by my favorite poet, Mary Oliver.

Why I Wake Early

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety –

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light –
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

A Lovely Mess

Jerry's 12th birthday is tomorrow. We're having a few boys over on Saturday for a slumber party. We'll be painting Munnies, playing ping pong, watching anime, eating cake, listening to music, and having a rollicking good time. I tend to save all my cleaning for just before we have guests, so I have a lot to do! Since today and tomorrow I'll be cleaning house, and the weekend will be devoted to kid wrangling and fun facilitating, I probably won't post anything new until Monday. In honor of all the cleaning, organizing, and rearranging I'll be doing these next two days (all because I don't clean regularly or put things away as I go), I leave you with some thoughts on tidiness--or, more specifically, the lack of it--and why it's not such a bad thing to be messy.

In this interview with theoretical physicist, David Deutsch, at TakingChildrenSeriously.com, Deutsch says he's pretty sure he couldn't be very productive without also being untidy.

When the interviewer asks, "Can you be sure you are not just rationalising this? Could it be that you just hate tidying up?"

Deutsch responds, "I can't deny that I hate it! It is a fact that tidying up is boring. There are so many interesting things to do in life that doing boring things is hardly ever top of my list of priorities. The question here is not whether tidiness is boring, but whether it is necessary, or useful. I think that there are no good practical reasons to be anywhere near as tidy as is conventional in our society. Tidiness is a thing which is foisted upon children, and it results in all sorts of unpleasant things for them like boredom and having their privacy invaded, and so they get nervous and uptight about their personal space, and sometimes this translates itself into hang-ups about tidiness which they then pass on to their children."

Last December, the New York Times ran an article called Saying Yes to Mess by Penelope Green. In the article, Green wrote "An anti-anticlutter movement is afoot, one that says yes to mess and urges you to embrace your disorder. Studies are piling up that show that messy desks are the vivid signatures of people with creative, limber minds (who reap higher salaries than those with neat “office landscapes”) and that messy closet owners are probably better parents and nicer and cooler than their tidier counterparts." (Finally there's proof!!)

How can you not love a book with the title A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder, How crammed closets, cluttered offices, and on-the-fly planning make the world a better place? This book, by David H. Freedman and Eric Abrahamson, "shatters the myths and misunderstandings about messiness and disorder that have led to an often pointless, counterproductive and demoralizing bias toward neatness and organization in our society." Sounds good to me!

And, lastly, I leave you with a quote from that most prolific and profound philosopher, Anonymous:

If the shelves are dusty and the pots don't shine,
it's because I have better things to do with my time.

Hear, hear!