Out with the Old!

It's surprising how a changed person reacts towards things he/she was ok with previously.

First of all, I say all this with no malice or contempt whatsoever. I never knew how messy we all were as a family until I went back home recently.

Suddenly, so many things that never bothered me before irked me terribly. I felt guilty. It seemed I was picking on everyone for the tiniest thing. But I couldn't help it. I felt that a lot of the ways they got about doing things was very inefficient and did not make sense. It seemed no one put any thought into what they were doing at all.

I guess it never bothered me because we all got so comfortable with the struggling caused by the inefficiency. We were so used to the permanent garage and backyard clutter. Permanent because my father always thinks that no matter how useless the piece of junk, there will always be a use for it one day. Throwing things out for him is unthinkable. I guess this is because he came from a poor village family and they were always finding different purposes for used stuff. My mother too. Even though she claims otherwise. She is just as bad.

So you can imagine how the outside of my family house would look like : A cross between a tool shed and a deserted garage sale. Dusty plastic shelves. Rotting pieces of wood in various sizes. A spare tyre. Assorted tools. Three different tool racks, with broken odds and ends. An old baby bathtub carrying broken pots and pans. A cracked, dusty aquarium. Mouldy hose. Empty tins. And other miscellaneous junk.

It has always been like this! Yet it seems as though I'm seeing it all for the first time.

My sister Elette complained that I'm now a "nenek kebayan". That I'm no fun, and that I'm always stressed out. Hardly so. In fact, I'm so happy with the way I am now because I can locate things easily. There's so much peace of mind with everything clean and tidy. Also I never feel burdened with the thought of cleaning a room that looked like it just got hit by a cyclops. It's great!

I do realize that habits do not change overnight. So in order to speed up the habit-forming process, I prepared a list that I would like to share with everybody. I made this specifically for the kitchen since it seems to be the most problematic.

Fridge Rules

1. NO dripping wet items. Always dry off anything you want to put into the fridge. Do not encourage mould.

2. NO leaving leftovers in fridge for more than two nights.

3. NO leaving stuff in the fridge with their boxes on. The boxes serve no purpose at all except to take up valuable space and to make it difficult to access the food item.

4. NO letting things rot in the fridge. The fridge is not a trashcan.

5. NO unnecessary medication. All medicine restricted to top right shelf. This is not a hospital.

6. NO putting ant-infested food into fridge thinking they will immediately die or mysteriously disappear. They are most likely to roam around in the fridge before dying in various corners. Do you really want to mix dead insects with the food you eat???

7. NO leaving food exposed. ie: half consumed 3-in-1 nescafe packets, kuih/cakes, bread, biscuits, packets of sauce from various fastfood outlets. This is because:

i. Fridge-raiders will rummage and knock over the exposed food, causing it to spill, and the culprit to quickly close the fridge, pretending nothing happened. The mess will rot and stink up the fridge.
ii. Exposed food gets comtaminated. Believe it or not, the fridge is not sterile. which leads to...
iii. Exposed food always looks less appealing. Thus, it will not be eaten, and will lead to the "Simultaneous Three Packets of Half-Consumed 3-in-1 Nescafe Packets" Phenomenon.
iv. Exposed food is synonymous to NEP.

8. NO pushing food into far corners of the fridge to make room for more junk. When it feels crowded, look at what does not need to be in there. Visibility is very important. What people cannot see, they cannot eat.

9. NO having the mentality of "It's ok, I'll need this someday." Food is corruptible. What you may not need in a week, you probably do not need at all.

Remarks:

1. There were at least 7 different bags of ikan masin and "bakas". Ironically enough, there were also various types of medicine, both traditional and modern, to bring down blood pressure (???) When questioned, culprit squeaked, "It's not good to eat this every day!" So keep it but don't eat it???

2. There was a bitten apple pushed far back into the dark recesses.

3. There was medicine that dated back to as early as 2003. (!) I was still in school!

4. There was an exposed pineapple-half doing a balancing act on a container smaller than she.

Solutions:

1. There shouldn't 7 of the same (unhealthy) thing. It's more blessed to give than to receive. And a sin to let things go to waste by letting them rot.

2. Lesser things in the fridge mean less work for the fridge. Thus longer fridge-life.

3. See-Through Containers.

4. Label! Label! Label!

5. Not having an overflowing fridge equals a moderate lifestyle. Gluttony is a sin. Buy and eat only what you need. Don't cling on to the memory of having only salt and rice to eat. Let it go.

6. Always clean up whatever little mess you make, be it a spill or stain, immediately. That way, you will never feel overwhelmed at an accumulated mess. Don't be NEP.

7. We are civilized, educated adults. We should not need other people to remind us to clean up after ourselves.

8. A maid is not essential. We just need to be responsible.

9. Remember, we have a baby eating food stored in this fridge. Let’s keep it clean!

That's it. Pardon the long-windedness. I just wanted to get my point across. Being a bona fide slob myself, I know how the mind of a slob works. But as Tia put it, I did a 180. Praise the Lord!

The real secret is, as the bf pointed out to me, is to just immediately deal with mess the second it happens. That way, mess will not accumulate and become overwhelming to clean up. Slobs out there, this is the habit to cultivate. When you practice this for the first time, you will feel unnecessary fatigue. Because you equal cleaning up to something horrible and tiring. It's the mind playing tricks. However, after keeping at it, you will find that you are no longer haunted by Mess, because Mess will be nonexistent.

Having said all this, I love my family with all my heart. They are wonderful people in so many other ways. And no matter how much more anal I become in the future, I've learned to accept that the house my parents live in will always have a man-made tropical forest in the backyard :)

It was good to be home!