With Lydia sleeping over at a friend’s house and Tage playing quietly enough by himself, I finally got started on the long-overdue housecleaning this afternoon, and I’m amazed–truly, struck almost dumb–by the capacity of my family to create messes. Why can’t we just pick up after ourselves like normal people?

I hate to cast aspersions, because I love my husband wildly–really, I do–but Olof is by far the worst offender. The kids make plenty of messes, sure, but they at least have the excuse of being kids. And me, I’m no Tidy Tess, but I can tolerate only a certain amount of mess and clutter before my fingers start itching to clear it all away: it would appear, I’m afraid, that the man of my dreams has a much higher tolerance for this sort of thing than I do. I think I could clean the entire house top to bottom in the time it would take him to clean just his office.

To be fair, though, he’s the one who has to work there and if he can stand it that’s all that really matters. I can always close the door if I don’t want to see it. He does clean it thoroughly once a year or so, but it doesn’t take long before the floor is covered again in old newspapers and littered with empty Coca-Cola bottles. It doesn’t seem to bother him, though. Honestly, he gets so wrapped up in his work that I doubt he even sees it.

As for me, sitting here bemoaning my husband’s untidiness is merely another way I’ve found to put off cleaning up my own messes. Guess I’ll get back to it.