Last Tuesday my mom wrapped a gift. She found some tissue paper and curling ribbon, picked a flower from the yard, and got the tape and scissors out from the kitchen junk drawer and wrapped the gift on the kitchen table. I was out of town Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday - volunteering at a theater a few hours away. I came home for a whirlwind fifteen minutes on Friday before leaving again to spend Memorial Day Weekend with friends at their family cabin. When I returned home - six days later - the tissue paper, curling ribbon, and tape were all still spread across the kitchen table. The scissors had found their way back to the junk drawer. I'm sorry, but I can't write that off as a symptom of hoarding disorder; that's called being lazy.
Two friends came to pick me up for the cabin trip. I was still throwing a few things in my bag, so I told them to come in for a minute. Kate I've known since college and she knows about my mom, but Shana is a new friend so I quickly added, as they entered, "Please excuse the state of the house. My mother is a hoarder and I'm only staying with her temporarily; I would never live like this." At the cabin I was sweeping the kitchen after a large group lunch, as I had also done after breakfast. "Damn," Shana proclaimed, "you're always cleaning, you're making everyone else look bad." Kate and Anna (who's family owns the cabin, and who I've known forever) laughed; "That's her style - don't feel like you have to keep up with her. She doesn't expect you too, and neither does anyone else." And it's true. I completely understand that I "see" mess differently than other people and I feel much more at ease putting in a quick bit of work to clean a mess than I do trying to actively ignore it. So when I'm among friends, that's what I do. This makes new friends a little nervous, but my good friends understand that I'm not playing the martyr or secretly judging others for not picking up the broom before me.
"Can I ask a question?" Shana began. "If your mother is...the way she is...how did you get to be the way you are? I mean, how did you even learn to clean at all...let alone be as clean as you are?" I have always thought of cleanliness as common sense. The kitchen table, for example, is for eating. If you need to use the table as the surface for a project, you clean up your tools an supplies afterwards, and put them in one designated place so they are easy to find the next time you need them. This makes so much sense. I don't remember having to be taught this, but I guess I learned it at school. I've read blog posts by other COH though, who would not consider themselves hoarders as well, but who struggle to understand the line between clean and dirty and how to keep on the clean side. My excessive cleanliness is most certainly a direct reaction against the way I was raised, but is my capacity for cleanliness in general genetic or was it learned - can't say.
At any rate, however, cleanliness is a lesson my mother has never learned. I find this particularly *amusing* since it was a lesson she taught, as a kindergarten teacher. She would sing songs about cleaning up as her students picked up after free play, while her supply closet was so cluttered it was deemed a fire hazard year after year, and I would come in every spring break to clean it up. How do you teach children a skill you are "incapable" of yourself?
Often in our fights my mother will yell, "You are not my mother, so stop acting like you are!" I have no desire to be my mother's "mother," but it's hard to know how else to act towards someone who is behaving like a child. Asking someone to put away supplies from a project they completed six days ago is not an adult conversation; it's a conversation you have with a child, who is just learning the concept. If you don't want to be reminded to clean up after yourself / be treated like a child, then you act like an adult and do it without being asked.
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