Why Creative People Should Live in Squalor

OK, I did something last week that I don't normally do. I cleaned my house.

I did it to prepare for our interview for my daughter's foreign exchange experience.

I straightened out my sewing area, put stuff away, dusted things off, and now I can't find anything.

Irony is not wasted on me. back a couple weeks ago, I was looking for the zipper foot that came with my new sewing machine. I know it was there when I brought the machine home but when I was most in need, the foot was gone. I finally gave up and went to Viking Village and bought a new zipper foot.

I proceeded to install many zippers.

Then, I cleaned.

Now, I can't find my regular foot.

And the whole "Field of Dreams" mentality isn't working for me either. I took my zipper foot off my machine and set out all of my unfinished projects that need my regular foot. I set them out like bait.

For if you need it, it will show up...

I've been waiting for several days now and I'm starting to have a sneaking suspicion that Kevin Costner is hopelessly full of shit.

So I think I will be making another trip to Viking Village in the very near future. I will have to fess up that I'm not really irresponsible, I'm just not used to a clean house.

And speaking of a clean house, I have been enjoying a free BBC America preview lately and I have become quite addicted to "How Clean is Your House?"

I had to laugh when I read Crazy Aunt Purl's blog post about the show. She got addicted to it and started to clean her own house like crazy. The show's premise is that two very British ladies visit homes that are squalid pits and they bring in a whole crew to clean it, taking bacterial and fungal swabs along the way for some absolutely dis-gust-ting science lessons.

Now, the people on the show are not just messy, they have deep seated psychological issues. There are people that haven't cleaned their house for ten years. There are bath tubs that need to be scraped out because the accumulated years of scum and skin look like a thick layer of mud. One guy had this little habit of not throwing away his kleenex, FOR A DECADE. One woman had an apartment that the cleaning crew took 80 bags of garbage and 60 bags of recycling out of. There was one room that had stuff piled up to the ceiling and a vine growing in the room from an outside plant.

So, I love this show! I love the hosts who are proper British ladies who are horrified at what they see but seem to understand that the majority of their clients are a little scary in the head.

And I find that putting my feet up on the half full baskets of laundry and snuggling into a nest of towels that need to be folded and watching this show is a wonderfully self indulgent experience.

After all, my house was cleaned last week.

And I'm not THAT crazy!