Plus Four Years Scares Me

I love an orderly house. The old adage of "A place for everything, and everything in it's place" makes me very happy, because it's true. When we set up housekeeping as newlyweds, things were incredibly orderly. My closet was divided by skirts on one side, blouses on the other. Within the skirts and blouses, things were organized by color, and blouses were further broken down by sleeve length. The code would have looked like a complex Dewey Decimal System, but there was no doubt that things were easy to find.

Things started to break down when I became pregnant. In my book, all fingers are pointing to the kids. My brain was so fried during pregnancy that I found the phone in the bread drawer one day, and in the fridge another. Clearly, the kids were determined to mess with me and my organized ways from conception.

Shortly after Becky became mobile, things started disappearing. A tube of lipstick, a necklace - random things. Things that should have showed up at some point but never did. Things that still haunt me even now, because my house should have been organized and under control and clearly was not. I remember them because they were traumatic, in those early days of the downfall.

Since then, I've given over to the fact that we live in the eye of the chaos storm. I lose at least one thing daily, and I don't even give it a thought. It'll either show up or it won't, and there's little I can do about it. Four rolls of tape and three pair of scissors should reside in the kitchen drawer, and at any given time there is no tape or scissors to be found. Excess is not an extravagance, it's a coping mechanism to help me find things easier.

While I miss my organized home and the ability to find everything I need, I wouldn't trade this chaos and loss of sanity even if I could. I don't remember those early days as being boring, but looking back now I know for a fact they must have been. How could they not be? There were no notes on the counter in the morning like this:

A note from Luke to Luke, about how to cook breakfast. Awesomeness.

And I wouldn't stumble upon this at the end of the day:

Is Micah starting a zoo? Were the zebras bad? Is it a zoo transfer?

While there was a day (way too many of them, actually) when I would have been frustrated because it's that much more to put away, I now just chuckle because the random funness is something I'll miss when the house is empty and organized again.

Today I saw a very pregnant lady, only 4 years older than Becky. I had a moment of sheer panic. It was much the same moment of panic I had when I met a girl with Downs this week that's only 4 years older than Micah, and realized that he'll be in high school then.

Please, give me chaos, lost scissors, and notes on the counter. I'll miss it all too soon.