Operation De-Hoardification: Day Four.

[fenderlove]

Had a setback this morning when one stack of five 20 gallon Rubbermaid containers toppled into another at about 6AM and scared the bejesus out of me. O_O I had to spend a good two hours after that rearranging them in a way where they won't fall over (two stacks of three, and one of four seemed to do the trick). I was actually able to open my closet for the first time in three years today, so my room is about 85% clean (or it will be once I'm done cleaning the baseboards, dusting, and vacuuming so I can stop moving piles of stuff from one area to another and all the stuff I've decided to keep is squared away where it needs to go). I'm hoping to be finished with the majority of cleaning tomorrow, leaving only the closet and the boxes of my stuff that's taking up the den to be gone through until later because Mom's OCD is killing her with the mess I've made in trying to make things cleaner for her. She was very upset at the boxes and bags of stuff we had to sit out for the garbage collectors. "What will the neighbours think?! I can't stand it! They will think it's filthy inside our house!" she says. Well, she's the one who DEMANDED this de-cluttering, so she can deal with the mess it created. Anyone will tell you that my house is immaculately clean besides my room, which has brought much shame to my mother. Honestly, my room has always been too small for all my stuff, and it just got worse as I went to college and started to amass actual furniture and a large amount of artwork and art supplies. She acts as though it was only supposed to take a single day to clean, but I told her that if I was going to do this Spring Clean then I was going to do it correctly and go through every single bag, box, and drawer to get rid of anything unnecessary to really prepare for when I eventually move out.



I actually feel very positive and happy about the progress I've made. I found some stuff that I thought I had lost forever and stuff I forgot that I had and stuff I wish I could forget. I actually discovered a disciplinary report from when I was kindergarten about how I locked myself in the bathroom on Halloween because a boy knocked me down, bit me on my shoulder until I was bleeding, and then chased me in there. I refused to come out until my mom came to get me, and she was so pissed off because she had paid a huge amount of money for the mermaid costume I was wearing and, since Mom wouldn't let me go trick'r'treating, that class party was the only chance I was going to have to wear it.

I also found the book that the school gave my mom when I was in second grade. It was called Raising Your Strong-Willed Child, and it talks about how girls with independent streaks need to be taught conformity, to have low expectations, and that any signs of uniqueness in art, sports, music, or academia need to be quashed as early on as possible because it will make them unsuitable for marriage because they will be unable to be subservient to their husbands if they have self-esteem. My mom told them where they could shove the damn book, but she kept it to show me when I was old enough to understand why the teachers at my elementary school were so horrid to me and treated me so harshly. What had originally prompted them to give her the book was because I refused to play a style of freeze tag that requires children to stand with their legs as wide as possible when they are tagged and to unfreeze them another kid has to crawl between their legs. The boys, of course, would make disgusting comments and try to grope the girls' bits while crawling through, and I was rather uncomfortable with this so I just refused to participate. The teachers didn't know how to handle that and couldn't understand why I was so uncomfortable; they just thought I was being insubordinate, which would later become a reoccurring theme in my academic career and their attitudes and inability to show any empathy towards their students has made me have a severe distrust of authority.

I will be very glad when I'm away from this wretched town because there have to be semi-normal places in this world that aren't as backwards as the day is long. >_

Comments

[lilithbint.livejournal.com]

the boys actually did that? O_O
Boys at my school were way too competitive, nobody had time to do anything except throw themselves between your legs and get up before anyone tagged you.
There is no way a school here would be allowed a book like that, not in the last thirty years anyway.
When I left university I had one box of stuff, a mattress and several suitcases of clothes which I promptly had delivered to my parents house so I could go travelling. When I got married my mother gleefully gave me back the boxes and the suitcases, luckily she'd gotten rid of the mattress, and another surprise box of my childhood stuff that had survived my destructive tendencies.

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

Nods. Cleaning up big messes always gives me a happy. And your Mom will be happy when everything is out.

That town of yours really is quite the place.

[fenderlove.livejournal.com]

From what I understand from friends who went to other schools in our county, my school was just a horrible anomaly filled with people who had no business being teachers. My mom begged them to let me be tested to move up a grade because I was so painfully bored when I was like seven years old, and they brought in the testing person to appease her. I tested two grade levels higher than what I was, but the school administrators said that they wouldn't even allow me to move up one grade level because I needed to learn to be "normal" like other kids my age. They encouraged my mom not to let me draw, write short stories, or read books that were "not appropriate" i.e. my mom's psychology and science textbooks from when she was in college. Apparently, talking about Charles Darwin riding on the back of a giant sea turtle that he found during his voyages was threatening to the very fabric of society! I was a little kid; I wasn't trying to debate about evolution. I just wanted to talk about a man who rode a sea turtle! If there had been another option for where I went to school, my mom would have sent me somewhere else, but alas this is the only school in our town. When I graduated from 8th grade, I was top in my class, and I got to make a speech. The teacher who introduced me said, "I'm sure we're all happy that she has done well despite all the silly nonsense in her head. I'm sure she'll do great things, like become a teacher or a nurse" (because people in this stupid hick town think that that's all women can do besides pop out babies). :P I think my mom has never wanted to throttle someone so badly in her entire life. XD

[fenderlove.livejournal.com]

I think that she is secretly happy right now but her OCD won't let her settle down to be outwardly happy. I actually also have a cleaning OCD, but it's towards other people's houses and things. I go into other people's houses, and I want to clean... and I start doing little things like organizing magazines on tables in size and alphabetical order... and also I like to even out rug fringe. I'm such a weirdo. XD

My town is the devil, and I think its only purpose in existing is to taunt me. *points to the reply to Lilithbint's comment above for another example of the badness I experienced* People who live here are just not right, and it's made me not right either. Haha!

[deborahw37.livejournal.com]

Clearing out clutter is good for the soul!

And that book from school sounds like a nightmare!

[fenderlove.livejournal.com]

It really is, on both counts. :D I haven't gotten started with the cleaning for today, but I'm about to, so here's to hoping that I get finished. XD