I just want to put this away . . .

The tidiness of my surroundings is very closely linked to my state of mental health. I didn’t need an expert to tell me that.

I have neat-freak friends for whom the joke about having CDO rather than OCD (because the letters are in alphabetical order, as they should be!) is so fitting that I am tempted to buy them the T-shirt. I don’t think I am quite that disrupted in my functioning if there are some tumbleweeds of pet hair hiding under the stools at the kitchen island, but if I want to get other things done, I really feel better if I put my world in order first.

My head is just clearer and my demeanour much more pleasant when things are where they should be and there is not a layer of dust over everything within a fifty foot radius. That is not the easiest thing to achieve with two English Springer Spaniels who are constant steady shedders and four cats who leave evidence everywhere of their blissful existence.

Could I do a commercial for Dyson vacuum cleaners? Honey, I could be their best spokesperson. Got my campaign all ready: Dyson sucks. And never stops.  Did I very nearly go nuts when our machine had to go to Toronto for service for two weeks? Nuts enough that when my sister-in-law offered her unused Dyson, I wanted to drive the hour to Bridgetown to get it immediately. There’s just something so satisfying about the visual proof of seeing all that dust and hair inside the cylindrical body of the machine! Yes, I am waxing poetic about a vacuum cleaner.

I don’t like clutter. While I haven’t gone for the stark, streamlined not-a-thing-on-the counter look, there are far fewer things in plain view in our kitchen, a catharsis made possible in part by our complete renovation in 2008. I have better storage now, so things have a place. Although the island can become a catch-all for whatever’s in our hands as we come through the back door, a quick rearrangement, a five minute sort each day, and it is bare again.

I recycle all the incoming paper as soon as it is dealt with – bills, magazines, newspaper. If too much stuff is allowed to build up, I get antsy and I can’t do much of anything else until I right the situation.

If all around me is in chaos, my brain feels that way, too. Sure, I have used this unease as an excuse to put off other tasks that I didn’t want to do (think grading essays!), but there are many pleasant things that I delay doing until I ‘straighten up a bit’.

Go ahead and laugh at me, all ye who dwell comfortably with disorder and the flyers from last month. And yes. I make the bed everyday as soon as I get up.