telophase

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sheesh

Yay

Well, somewhat. I'm happy that my boss appears to be coming down with the same thing I'm getting, since that means that I'm not just suffering from allergies but an actual communicable illness. :D

In other news I've got Clean House, one of those decluttering shows, on in the background, and I believe that it is the portrait of a doomed marriage: the wife is apparently the major clutterbug who's completely unorganized and unable to figure out how to clean and organize the house, but the husband is not helping because of his mania for collecting 60s memorabilia, and his insistence that he will not help his wife learn to handle the house because he says in a marriage there are realms of responsibility and it's up to the person responsible for it to make sure it gets done. And since he takes care of the mortgage and the bills, she should take care of the house. Note also that this husband has a Wall of Himself, which is full of photographs of him on his various travels ... and not a single one of him with his wife. And he's actually arguing with the show's host about putting one up with his wife in it, because he says he wants it to be a wall all about himself, because he likes to show where he's been to visitors who've come to the house.

Mello has the perfect solution to the whole mess, and it involves firebombing.

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he says in a marriage there are realms of responsibility and it's up to the person responsible for it to make sure it gets done. And since he takes care of the mortgage and the bills, she should take care of the house.

I sort of agree on this one. For years, when I did the wage earning and bill paying, it was Mr. Gynocrat's job to tend house [we had a housekeeper, hello?] and cater to teh spawn, 24/7. Now that I'm just a lowly comiker and he's working again, we still have the housekeeper, but like--I'm actually expected to be the *gasp* a parent. 0_0
As the self-absorbed husband in my family, I suppose I'm due for a firebombing from Mello.

The biggest problem with that division, which I forgot to put into the post, was that she never actually agreed to that division. He declared that to be the division when they got married, and she had no say in it, which she resents quite a bit.

For myself, I'm inclined to make the division in terms of hours of work, rather than income. If I marry or move in with someone and stay home to do art and pull in maybe $10K a year working on art 8 hours a day, while he earns $60K a year working at whatever 8 hours a day, I'm not about to also take on the burden of most of the housework. But I'm also smart enough to talk about this with my partner and work it before moving in together.

Ah, yes. I want the house to be Tidy and it's My definition of Tidy and it's Your Job.

I say she murders him, lives on the insurance, and is a happy clutterbug forever after.

Not entirely beyond the bounds of possibility - the neighbors say that they've heard the couple fighting many times before. :D

I tried to leave a comment on your LJ introducing myself and saying I would like to friend your LJ, but was unable to do so since I'm not on your f-list.

Hi! I'm

telophase's writer. Mind if I add your LJ to my reading list? (I did already, actually, but can take you off if you'd rather I didn't.)

0_0 Oh wow. Sure. Are you ready for Crat's LJ? LOL!

Well, I've read some of your public rants already, so probably. Also, I am Jewish, and so come from a culture of strong opinions. ;)

Thanks!

Cool. The more heebs the better. I'm still trying to convince Mr. Gynocrat that Wonder Woman and the rest of the chicks on Themyscira are really the lost tribe...you know ^_-

A lot of the decluttering/organization-type shows seem to have weird relationship dynamics. The most prevalent one seems to be a collector of authentic valuables paired with someone who's just plain messy. Another seems to be one or both partners working at home - that just seems to spell disaster for the home because neither will take the initiative to do anything , even though they are both at home.

The ones I feel most sorry for are the ones who have let their kids absolutely overrun the entire house, and have no idea how to draw boundary lines. I'm sorry, but children should not be sleeping in their parents' bedroom or using it as a(nother) playroom.

I suspect that if you did a followup a year later on the subjects of these shows, they'd be right back where they were, because getting over this sort of thing requires behavioral changes. As I should know, since I'm a slob - every so often I make an effort and clean the place up, but it always goes back because I don't change the behavior of dumping whatever items I have in my hands where they are.

I've discovered, though, that a good part of my problem is that I can't put things away where I can't see them, otherwise I forget they're there. I have to have everything out where I can see it and lay hands on it, which is where a lot of the messy comes in - if I'm not finished with something like bills, paperwork, an art piece, stuff I need to mail, library books, etc., I dare not put it up because I won't remember it. I think my ideal living space would be a loft with a ton of shelving everywhere, especially dividing up the space.

One of the shows I saw last year had a mother and daughter living in a messy house, and after they cleaned it up, the mother got belligerant and angry and cried that the place was fine before and it was awful now. The hostess tried to ask if there was anything they could have done that would make it better, and never got an answer. I suspect there was a whole lot more going on there, and the woman needed the services of a good psychologist rather then a TV show.

I do very well with the labeled box, file folder, and sorted shelves, especially when paired with the concept "if it doesn't fit, you probably don't need it." I'm a fairly anal person anyway - my clothes are arranged by type and color, my CDs & DVDs are alphabetized, my books are grouped by topic, and all my hobby materials are sorted into boxes. I'm not really obsessive about it, 'cause I tend to leave stuff out, but there is a place for everything, and given about an hour I can put everything that's out back where it belongs and find it again. I will admit that visiting the homes of my Single Male Nerd friends makes my hands itch to sort and file, though.

I think if these shows emphasized the basic skills needed to keep an organized home, and tailored them to the particular mindset of the family, they'd be more successful. There is one (I forget the particular name of the show) where a very soft-spoken Philippino man goes through the organization process /with/ the subject family, rather than doing the sorting while they do some arts or crafts project, and he seems to do a very good job of teaching technique rather than just getting it done.

I'm great at working out organizing systems - that's a good aprt of what makes me a librarian,a fter all - but actually doing the work and sustaining it over the entire room isn't that great. :D I invested a great amount of time in working up an organizing system for my manga that will allow the collection to grow, but have I done much else with my other books? Nope.

I saw one of the shows were they worke dout that a woman was visual and needed to be able to see everything, so they did her entire closet with wire shelving and transparent boxes. And they did something else, which I'm going to have to implement: two laundry baskets, one for clothes that need to be washed, and one for clothes that had been worn but could be worn again before being washed.

I've discovered that there are some kinds of storage that I can trust -- I trust that it's still there even after I put it away. I have a couple of embroidery chests that have small enough drawers that I trust things to still be there, so projects I'm not currently working on this minute can be there. I have a jewelry chest with a million bazillion compartments. It almost works, except I'm going to have to hang an earring tree on the wall, because earrings apparently have to be hung up as soon as I take them off or I'll just dump them on a flat surface.

But, yes, it's all about out of sight, out of mind.

The only thing of that sort that's worked for me is teh chest of drawers right below my pritner, whcih contains art supplies in the top, printer paper of all sorts in the middle, and art paper of all sorts in the bottom drawer. And I've got some wire shelving with these collapsible fabric boxes from Target which contain tape, CDs and a few random items that have no other place to go. The boxes have no lids, which I think is the key.

My fabric stash is in *clear* plastic boxes from Target. The clear is important. I can look in through the side and see "Okay, that's the red jacquard silk, no, the black velvet isn't in this box."

I am exactly like you that way. The trouble is, there's not enough space to have everything visible, so important stuff often ends up forgotten because it ended up on the bottom of a stack.

Note also that this husband has a Wall of Himself, which is full of photographs of him on his various travels ... and not a single one of him with his wife. And he's actually arguing with the show's host about putting one up with his wife in it, because he says he wants it to be a wall all about himself, because he likes to show where he's been to visitors who've come to the house.

... zuh?

That bit, for some reason, strikes me as the skeeziest.

Also, the BPAL imps came! I need to get a good sniffu of the CTIII ones you sent for me to run scent diagnostics on, but right now I am enamored of The Candy Butcher. I applied it last night and it is STILL THERE. *boggle* And it is delicious.

Yes. And he wouldn't admit that there was something wrong with him refusing to put a photo of his wife, or even himself with his wife, up on the wall.

Yaay! XD

I'm getting a chocolate Lick It vibe out of it. The cream in the drydown is totally the same vanilla that's in Lick It, which thrills me no end. Argh. Now I'll have to sell some of my GC to get a bottle. D:

(Note the above will make no sense if you haven't tried Lick It. But you should!)

The part about the pix really stood out - I was watching an episode of Law and Order: SVU with my mother over the weekend, and the psychologist investigating the crime scene noted the significance of pictures of the husband (murdered) and his wife (suspect) and their kids, and how the presence or absence of various people in various pictures (and the expressions, where they were looking, etc. of the pictured people) were significant.

I don't give the marriage you described long either. I don't have ANY pictures of me on display UNLESS they are with Breathless or my son or other family members or friends.

At least their stuff will be tidy and easily found when they're splitting up their stuff during the divorce! :D

Oh my....I think I entirely agree with Mello here.... Not that my house is by ANY means neat and tidy (and the hubby and I have our....disagreements on where things belong.....like empty food packages...he thinks they belong on the counter, yet I prefer the trashcan....however, I seem to have this thing about fabric being on the floor.... *shrug*)

But at least I can say that if we were to have any pictures of us up (I think the only one that has either one of us up is this one (http://pics.livejournal.com/pzb/pic/00020w1f/g8)...not even wedding pictures....sad, I know XD), there wouldn't be this selfish arguement about it being MY wall of fame...

Yeah....I smell an impending divorce of doom....assuming it hasn't already been filed.... XD

See, this is why I married a man who is just as incapable of keeping tidy as I am!! Yeah, we'd both rather we were tidy, but it's just not going to happen.

I also have that problem with "If I don't see it out, it may as well not exist." Especially with regards to food in the fridge. That's one thing that makes Nick nuts.

(I, of course, am driven nuts by his socks & shoes, which are everywhere all the time)

Uh huh. I sense control freak there - "MY Wall"? Talk about cutting his wife out of his life! *smells divorce*

my bf does most of the cleaning because :shrugs: i won't. And he does most of the cooking but that's mostly for safety reasons :D. I've tried to be neater since my bf gets whacko when he can't find stuff. Of course if he were less neat, then he'd be use to the chaos, and be able to navigate it better ^_^
so who would want a wall full of photos of themselves only? How does that conversation work? "look at me,look at me." for 20 minutes or so...

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