Three Levels

Monday  around lunchtime  Mystie

The number three has a pleasing aesthetic. God Himself is three, and woven all throughout the world and the harmonies He created is the balance of three. I like things in sets of three. I liked them even more when I studied up on medieval lit and Dante for my first lit class five years ago. The medievals were obsessive about using threesomes in their aesthetics; how could you get more perfect than God Himself? So Dante has three sets of threesomes and 333 is significantly used in his poem’s structure. Really, the thing that appeals to me the most about having three kids is that it’d be, well, three. For any number to be cliche, at least it’s three. :) Maybe we’ll have to go for nine to appease my attraction to three. :)

Anyway, I began with a rabbit trail that has no bearing on what I intended to post about. :)

We live in a three-level house. Basement, main level, and upstairs comprise our living areas. And though I think this is a structure I could live with, a structure we might end up using should we build a house, it has both its blessings and its challenges.

For example, if someone comes to visit, they only see our main level. Yes, unless they need to use the bathroom, but I just try to keep liquids to a minimum. This means that all I have to do is keep roughly 600-square-feet tidy and presentable and I look like an amazing housekeeper to the unexpected visitor. Now, they have no reason to venture upstairs, where there are only bedrooms and a washer and dryer; where there are only full laundry baskets in the hallway, piles of boxes in the spare room, an even layer of clothing across the floor of our bedroom, and a pile of the entire contents of their bedroom in one large mass in the boy’s room because I let them play unheeded in the morning while I dress and prepare myself for the day. No need to go there. No need to go downstairs — unless you need a working bathroom. If you do, let me just close that door to the office. It’s been tidied once or twice since we moved, but you can’t tell at this point. Then there’s the boxes of books around the overflowing bookshelf at the base of the stairs. That’s alright, though; until we get another bookshelf that pile at least says, “What can I do? I have too many books for one bookshelf.” Too many books isn’t a problem.

I think I might be emerging from the fog of the first trimester. However, the move and the first trimester and the new arrangements of a new house have worked together to completely destroy my fledgling good habits. I had our rental house almost under control and never too far descended to chaos, never too far from reclamation. Now I’m in a new set-up that I haven’t figured out yet and I’ve gotten used to the state of things as they are: tidy main level, chaotic basement and upstairs. I have kept up on the essentials — dishes done, living & dining room maintained, and laundry washed — but allowed the peripheries to get out of hand. It’s only now starting to bug me. That’s the first step. Can I let it just stay at that phase for awhile? You know that whole “second trimester energy boost” is just a hoax, don’t you?

I have this idea that the irritation at the chaos will marinate within me for awhile until one day I will wake up brimming with energy and resolve and I’ll take care of it all in one fell swoop. Can’t I simply wait for that day?

Whenever I try to do little portions once a day — a couple times a week — once a week — it’s always undone by the time I come back to do another small portion and it never seems that any headway is made. I’m afraid I’m not a little-by-little type of person. I’ve got to save up for the big smash. It’s the only way I’ll actually do it, I think. There’s no use planning it out and scheduling and dividing up tasks or any of that. Time to acknowledge the way I actually do things and just go with it. I have to set aside an afternoon, maybe one afternoon per level, and just go for it. Then it will be maintenance time and the routine habits will have to be newly established.

There are other projects I’d like to tackle, but it would be folly to begin pursuing any of them before my house is in order.

*Sigh*

This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 1:47 pm and is filed under Housekeeper. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.