Scared Clean

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SNL likes to parody a documentary that aired in the late 70's called "Scared Straight." Short and quick, Scared Straight was about a group of juvenile delinquents and their exposure, filmed, to actual convicts. Like, face to face close enough to get spit in your eye exposure.

The hope was that these prison guys with names like ChopChop, Jesus, Rodman, Gallo--would scream, berate, and terrify these tenderonies straight and away from a life of crime. Oh and there be swear words, along with lots of kissysmooch sounds out to the air.

Scary shiz and man oh man if I were 15-year-old Danny Levinger invited to spend the day with these lifers? Guaranteed I'd come back with a rewritten life plan in my notebook on the bus ride home, fully complete ten years out called "Scared Damn Right."

Well, I've just had my own Scared Straight revelation.

While flipping through talk show channels the other day, (I skipped out on AndersonLive, he keeps ignoring my on-air tweets so I got him back good by changing channels) I stopped on a show that was interviewing clutter control professionals. The segment was called Not Quite Hoarders. Oh and it was as valuable as Scared Straight to me.

Thirty minutes into the show, I became what Standolyn Roberston, star of A&E's popular series, Hoarders, calls "action prone." Action prone is a mental state where you need to STRIKE WHILE THE IRON'S HOT. When you're action prone, you are motivated--the Hoarders' version of Nike's Just Do it.

When I heard one of the clutter organizers say, "our children learn organization from us. Their response to an environment has to do with what is modeled at home. Living with disorganization and too many things will DESENSITIZE them to disarray in their future and they will have DIFFICULTY seeing chaos, where someone else who grew up in order and organization may recognize disorder much quicker. AND PLUS ALSO TOO these children of disorganiztion WILL NOT KNOW how to organize their future homes," my head popped up like the wounded gazelle at a watering hole when she senses danger.

The caps you see above may not have occurred but so what, that's how I heard it. So, basically, when my three boys go away to college, they'll be the ones falling asleep on top of a stack of books with socks hanging off their desk lamps while piles of underwear are what they use for a pillow.

Charming visual. I know. Because of me.

I can no longer call my stuff treasures, precious, semi-precious, valuable, antique, heirloom, generational, collectible, memorabilia, mementos, keepsakes, souvenirs. I can't keep the toothbrush they used when they first brushed their teeth by themselves.

I can no longer deny, procrastinate, avoid, be indecisive, feel overwhelmed, or unfocused. I can't say either I do it all today, or I don't do it all.

I need to decide, handle, toss out, spend time, give away, plan, be ruthless. I need to drop off five industrial strength bags of things at the family sharing store once a month.

I am going to clean up because I will in no way become that lady responsible for my three kids sitting on metal folding chairs in some church basement someday while busloads of young college-bound students are brought in to see them while my three whistle and cat call out to them, screaming, "Yeah?! Ya think ya all of a sudden one day wake up underneath a pile of 200 plastic Transformer cups?! Huh? Ya think we like being this way?!"

I'm so action prone right now that by the time I'm through with this place, I'll be written up in Destination Must Sees of Taoist Monthly.

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