Clutter

Something that I am starting to work on but have not come near to understanding, is my messiness. Sometimes I watch the TLC show "Hoarding." I can't watch the show while I'm eating because it makes me nauseous. I will watch it sometimes though when it's a quiet morning with just me at home. This morning is one such morning and watching the show has me thinking about my own struggles with keeping my areas clean as well as wanted to keep things. I'm not the only family member who struggles with messiness. My youngest sister struggles the worst with it.

I know that almost no one reads this blog. I know that this blog will probably never really be read. But I keep on writing because it helps me push myself to face the truth. This blog helps me work through understanding what happened to me. This blog forces me to dig deeper into my past and also the articles people have written to help me. This blog is a safe outlet for my feelings and memories.

My oldest sister went through a phase where her room was a complete mess. Her room was above knee-deep in clothes and papers and other girl clutter. We moved to a smaller house where she and I had to share a room once again. I cried to my Mother because I did not want her messiness in my room. She eventually did become more clean. I'm not really sure what factors went into her cleaning more. I don't know if she truly changed or my parents put enough "pressure" on her for her to start keeping it clean. By "pressure" from my parents, I mean probably a combination of humiliation, spankings, and blackmail. Because that's just the way my parents operate. For the rest of her time at home, my oldest sister keep her space spotless. I'm not sure how she is now. She has mentioned a few times that she would be embarrassed if any of the family stopped in so I don't think her house is spotless but I still don't think it's a huge problem. She has become fairly healthy emotionally so I think if she was still struggling with it she probably would have sought professional help.

For most of my younger years, my life was pretty structured. We had church at least three times a week. We would clean the entire house on Wednesday and Saturday. The house was always spotless for Sunday because often people would come over after the meetings at church. However, after my dad suddenly left the church, our lives lost much of the structure. My dad and Mother had many other things on their minds other than taking care of the children. Sometimes meals would be forgotten. The school work often went undone for days one end. We would end up doing school work on the weekends to catch up whenever Mother noticed that we were behind. People were stopping in at our house at all hours of the day and night and without any warning. Sometimes we would go weeks without seeing anyone.

With this lack of structure, my sisters and I started to let our room get a little messy. Once it got messy, Mother was just too busy and depressed to notice or ask us to clean it up. One very embarrassing day stands clear in my mind. We were having meetings some nights of the week in our home. For one such meeting, our room was an extreme mess. We closed the door and hoped that no one would go in. But we were not so lucky. The [Fitzgerald] family had many children and these children were crazy and energetic and disrespectful. Of course they had to see why that room door was closed. When they saw the mess, the laughed so hard at us. I think all the children in our group at the time laughed at us for weeks to come.

I've mentioned several times that at one point during my parent's time in the cult, we lost pretty much everything and started living in a very small space. At that time, all of my clothing had to be brought down to a total of three skirts/jumpers and five shirts. I had two pair of shoes (tennis shoes and church shoes). We each had a small Rubbermaid tote that was to hold all of our socks and underwear as well as any personal belongings. If we got too many personal belongings, we would have to "slim down" our tote so that everything could fit in there. We had to throw out anything extra. Several years later, we finally got to move into a three bedroom house. The space felt amazing, even if it was still packed with people.

For the first while in the new house, everything stayed tidy. However, over time, the floor got more and more cluttered. The closest started filling up and under the bunk beds started filling up. A few years later we were able to move to a bigger house, but my youngest sister and I continued to share the same room. That summer after moving into the bigger house is when our room started to explode. We had more space in the house so my Mother did not come up to our room that often. My Mother never cleaned at that point, so she never really pressured us to clean up.

I bought my first car the next summer. Our room was still so messy that I lost one set keys in there and never found them again. At that point, I started cleaning up my own mess. Although my sister's mess was still very bad, I would keep my half of everything clean. It looked pretty comical because we shared a dresser, where one side was mine and the other side was her's. The top of my side was clean and even dusted, while her half had at least a foot of things on it. Her side had drawers half pulled out and clothes hanging everywhere.

The next year I moved off to college. When I moved away, my younger sister's room totally exploded. I was the only person living in my first apartment. I spent the first week there reorganizing everything and making sure everything was in its spot. My apartment stayed mostly clean, but I do remember a few times that it did not. I had troubles doing my dishes regularly. I think many college students do struggle with that so that is probably not anything specific to my condition. However, there were a few times that I was embarrassed by the clutter. I remember one time I was in a hurry and looking for something specific that I couldn't find. I pulled out all the drawers in my dresser and spread them out on my floor. Of course that had to be the day that my group decided to come over for the evening. There were some giggles at me and I giggled in embarrassment but it wasn't too bad. I remember another time a friend stopped by unexpectedly and I had to quickly throw some clothes that were in the living room into my bedroom and close the door,.

Despite being fairly clean in my first apartment, I was still terrified about people coming over and my apartment being dirty. Whenever people would come over, I would try to get there a couple hours beforehand so that I could make sure that my apartment was spotless. I think the reason I was always worrying about my apartment being spotless was because my Mother always told us that if our cleaning was not spotless, it was not clean. She always expected perfection and if we did not give her perfection, we were a failure and we failed at our job.

The summer after my first apartment, I had to move out of my apartment and into another apartment that I shared with other roommates. I did not have time to sort through my things before moving into that apartment and for several months my room was packed full of clutter. However, over winter break I was able to organize my room once again. However, my car started to get out of hand. I always had clutter in it. I never wanted anyone to ride in it because I was embarrassed by the amount of stuff in my car. If someone were to ride in my car, I would stuff everything in the trunk. But I wouldn't clean out the trunk later. It got to the point where my trunk was full. One such day of stuffing everything in the trunk, there was food in there. I left that food in there for months. When I finally got around to cleaning out the trunk, I had maggots in my car that would fill my car up with flies.

The next year, I moved to yet another apartment and that's when my clutter got out of control once again. I was hiding everything in my room. I was embarrassed of my car. I pretty much tried to keep everything hidden. Things got very bad. I think what really saved me at that point was starting to date my now husband. I was forced to clean up so that I was not embarrassed by having him around. There were still times when the messiness got out of hand. The last time I was truly messy was when I had my mental breakdown. Once my boyfriend and I moved in together, I really started to keep everything in order. I still struggle sometimes with having a messy car but I am clean for the most part.

However, my precious sister is still very much struggling with clutter. In fact, she just lost custody of her kids because of the condition of her house. We have always made excuses for why our spaces were messy. After I moved out, our room got completely out of control. The cat  would mess in there. My sister would spill food and drink. The room became disgusting. When my sister moved with her husband, things did not get much better but she always blamed it on the living conditions. The finally were able to get a house of their own without living with other people. She always assured me that her house was in much better condition but this week proved that it actually may be the worse that it has ever been.

I think the biggest change for me was marrying a clean man. Maybe her issue was marrying a messy man. But I think there are deeper issues that caused all of the girls in our family to become messy.