Here’s my dilemma.  When I live messy, I can’t find anything.  When I live clean, I’ve thrown everything I need away.  When I live messy, I dig through piles of junk mail trying to find the babysitter’s phone number.  When I live clean, I realize her phone number was with a pile of junk mail that I threw in the trash yesterday.  Either way, no phone number.   I’m a person who is destined to never have the babysitter’s phone number.  I understand this.  I embrace this. 

Messy people hide things.  It’s what we do.   Oh, we can have company quite frequently.  The house looks stellar upon company’s arrival.   What our company doesn’t know is what happened with a 30-gallon garbage bag an hour before they arrived.  Messy people, take heart.  I know you’re getting nervous thinking I’m going to reveal one of our trade secrets.  Take a deep breath and remember that confession is good for the soul.  Messy people “bag” things.  There.  I said it.  We need a 12-step program for out-of-control “bagging.”  Right before company comes, we get a clean 30-gallon garbage bag and we zoom through the house like the Tasmanian Devil on a mission to throw suntan lotion, junk mail, old magazines, flip flops, dirty dishes, clean clothes, unpaid bills, school permission slips, and overdue library books in a garbage bag.    There have been times I’ve mistakenly “bagged” one of my children because they were sitting so still in front of the TV.  The bag is then deposited in an undisclosed location to be dealt with at a later time.

Clean people are still in shock after reading the “bagging” confession.  I know.  Clean people are saying to each other over coffee, “Gertrude, did she say she ‘bags’ things?  What in the world does she mean?  Why is she ‘bagging’ things? Why are there things that need to be ‘bagged’?” 

Must I spell it out for you?  Must I weep and pour out my very SOUL?  Okay, Cleanies.  I’m only going to explain this one time.  Stuff is lying around our house in places it doesn’t belong.  Yes, in places it doesn’t belong.   Many of the items in our house have never even found a home.  They’re indigent items.  That’s how they end up in the bag of shame. 

Clean people don’t “bag” things.  But they need not feel haughty or self-righteous.  Oh no.  Clean people could use a 12-step program of their own.  Cleanies have their own little rituals before company comes.  They pick microscopic pieces of fuzz off the carpet.  They sweep under rugs and use strange vacuum attachments.  They even clean their oven.  May I let you in on a little secret?  Unless an animal has crawled into your oven and died a painful death, an oven doesn’t need to be cleaned.  It’s an oven.  It’s a place where you bake things.  It’s not a tea room where you entertain guests. Cleanies, I’m saying this because I love you.  On your death bed you may end up regretting the hours you spent cleaning the oven with that toxic substance.  Think about why your messy friends live longer.  Less exposure to cleaning fumes.

I’d love to keep writing about this ever-important subject.    But company is on the way and my boys can’t find their shoes.  Why can’t they remember to look in the garbage bag in the guest bathtub?