Messy Jessie

I’m pretty good at taking care of people. What I’m really bad at is keeping things off the floor. I was expecting a challenge when the doctor told us that Scott’s foot would need to be completely immobilized for four weeks, but I didn’t think it would come in the form of having to conquer my own compulsion for chaos.

Scott can only get from here to there with his left foot. His right foot may not touch the ground at all. He can use crutches, he can use a walker, he can hop or slide or shimmy on his butt. But he can’t put any weight on his ankle for another two weeks.

We live in a house with approximately one thousand stairs, so there’s that to contend with. But bigger than that, there’s me to contend with. She who leaves clothes on the floor, cabinets open, shoes strewn about. It is my nature and my habit to carry armloads of parcels in from the car and just dump them on the floor until I’m ready to deal with them. Often that takes days.

I pile things on the bottom steps to be taken upstairs whenever I’m making the trip. I have my places for backpacks, tennis bags, laundry baskets, snow boots, magazines to be filed, garbage to go out, and guess what – it’s all on the floor.

My head hurts from trying to turn myself into a person who puts things in their proper places. I don’t mind the extra chores, the bed pans, the tracking of meds, picking up all the little slack that my husband can’t manage. But picking up in general – I just don’t roll that way.