My Fault.

Children don’t get report cards anymore. At least they don’t at Kid’s school. They get progress reports. Since Kid is a child prodigy, much like I was, she always gets a full boat of Satisfactorys. Well, almost. Always one N – Needs Work. Organization. As in, her cubby is a mess, her backpack is packed full of stuff, and when I go to pick her up from school, she’s always the last one out of the classroom. Look, I’m not one of those perfection moms. I don’t care if she gets straight Ss but this N bothers me. A lot. Because it is ENTIRELY my fault.  Behold, Exhibit A. My Desk:

What a shit show.

That’s actually pretty clean for my desk.  I have not taught Kid anything about being organized. It bothers me so much because I really want to be organized. The weird thing is, I’m organized virtually. As in, I have all my ducks in a row with my calendar, contacts, even my friends on FB and twitter are organized into lists. For some reason though, I can not seem to get it to cross over. Exhibit B: Actual conversation with Mike.

Me: Do you know where the menthol chest rub for colds is?

Mike: Hmm. Did you check in the bathroom where it’s supposed to be?

Me: Duh.

Mike: I feel like I’ve seen it around. Did you look on the windowsill in the kitchen? On top of the microwave? In the junk drawer?

Me: Yes, yes, and yes – AND in my desk. Can’t find it anywhere.

See? This is bad. Very bad. Windowsill in the kitchen? That is NOT where mentholated chest rub goes.  I feel terrible I haven’t taught Kid to be organized. I guess we’re going to work on it together as a family. We organized the hell out of her room the other day. It looks great. Now, if we can only keep it that way.

13 thoughts on “My Fault.

  1. Guilty of disorganization, too! My problem is not following through with the system that I decide to use. I’m in my thirties… do you think it’s too late to change now?

    1. God, I hope not. I just keep on trying. One of these days I’ll get it. Though, as you can see from the comment below (my mom) I’m totally going to just blame her 😉

  2. First, maybe you should bribe Ryan with a Growler to come and show you how to organize – he’s really good at it, being an Accountant and all. Second, forgive yourself and blame it on ME – did I EVER show you how to organize, or for that matter clean anything? I’ve always admitted that I have LOTS of issues, but compulsive cleaning isn’t one of them. Wish it was.

  3. My goodness! Your desk is prertty organized in my mind! In my office, I have piles of paper on my desk that I often use the floor for more piles of paper! People are always stunned (look disgusted) when they see my office and I plead “it’s organized chaos and it works for me”. Like you, my virtual world is super organized – appts, e-mails, etc. Don’t know what gives but I guess I should be thankful that I got one thing “organized”.

  4. Oh, you can’t see under my desk. That’s where I hide all my notebooks. Usually it’s about 20x worse than this. This was a clean day. Usually I have newspapers, books, and knitting all over the place. Oh, and I shouldn’t forget the dirty dishes 😉

  5. Yay! Sounds like my house. My favorite is always “Where is the ibuprofen?” Because it is NEVER in the same fucking place twice. Because that would be too damn easy.

    1. Oh, we can ALWAYS find the ibuprofen, because for about 6 months whenever I couldn’t find it, I just bought more. Now we have it all over the house.

  6. damn, I am SO with you on that one….. when I saw exhibit A I thought “that’s nothing!” I do hate it though, and hope to teach my kids different (second didn’t ask for permission and just came along, so never had your “whenyouhavingtheotherone” problem)

  7. LOL your desk looks organized to me, look, you can still see the desktop! I actually posted a pic of my office space a few months ago, and my desk hasn’t been that clean since… you could see the overflowing ‘in’ box lol. My domain files are organized. My computer files are organized as if an OCD person plays in them daily (hello)… I have about 35 gmail folders, so yeah, you might find the TUMS in the freezer, but there’s probably a good reason for that. hahah.

    I enjoyed your post, made me literally LOL 😉 Gotta run, I just remembered where the frozen peas are!

    1. Ha! The worst part about my terrible desk, is that it’s in a corner of the living room, so there’s no hiding it from the world. Maybe I should put up a cubicle.

  8. The only people who need organization are the people who *need organization* – the small minded OC twits. Awesome people who *appear* disorganized on the outside (even though they are sharply organized on the inside of the head) only have to organize the outside world for two reasons – to find stuff – i.e. the utilitarian ability to quickly and efficiently locate things to keep up whatever awesomeness they are up to, and the second reason, the darker, bitter reason – because the straight-jackedted twits who can’t handle visual disorganization – and I further theorize (as I get off topic) that these twits need to organize their surroundings because they have no concept of mental organization – things are such a mess inside their heads that they need to impose order on the outside, since it is the only thing they can control. Furthermore, because society as a whole tends to smile upon outward organization, these OC twits not only feel justified in abusing the awesome people, but it feeds their internal obsessions to the point that they become megalomaniacs that are convinced that their mental disease is how people are supposed to act. It’s a sick circle of evil. Fight the power!

  9. And another thing: No one is “guilty of disorganization” – they are Free From Constraint.

    I should write greeting cards.

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