Clean Drawers

Eric and I watched Hoarders together last night. We were chatting during the commercials, and realized something.

When I feel antsy about the state of the house, my urge is to start cleaning the hidden places. Junk drawers, catch-all cabinets, linen closets, toy boxes, my makeup box...Places that I know have been accumulating crap for months, maybe even years, and will just continue to fester and spread. My first instinct isn't to straighten up the random papers on the kitchen island or clear off my nightstand. In my mind, those things get straightened up so often that they're not the danger. I may go a few days without cleaning off the kitchen counters, but they're going to get straightened up fairly quickly. The hidden places, not so much. They can be untouched for months....they're the scary places to me. I feel so good when they're organized and purged.

Eric's first instinct is to clean up the places in full view. He wouldn't get to the unseen places until everything seen is straightened up, and maybe not even then, because at that point he feels good about how the house looks. His is probably the more common approach to keeping up a house.


There's something in that............