A strange situation

Have you ever been really good at something, but you will do whatever you can not to do it?

For me, it's cleaning. I'm great at it. You'd have to be, growing up with my mom (who'd have to be good at it, too, growing up with my grandmother). I annoy roommates by asking them to clean the bathroom after they've just cleaned it. I told my roommate, Kevin, earlier this week when we were planning a massive apartment cleaning, that if he wanted to do a general cleaning of the place, I would do all of the anal/nit-picky parts. He ended up doing a very thorough cleaning ... but there's still plenty for nit-picky me to do (my list involves reorganizing the bathroom cabinet and dusting the heaters).

My room looks like a tornado stopped by ... for a month or so. My mom, when she visits, keeps asking, "How can you live in this room?!" I don't have an answer.

Do I like living in filth? Hell no. I cringe when I wake up to find that I slept next to a bag of tortilla chips (yes, this happens more frequently than I would like to admit). I won't sit in my arm chair because there are Loki-feathers covering it (the plate from when I had Graham crackers last week doesn't make it any more inviting). I have several pairs of shoes, a trash bag, and my college degree sitting on the floor.

According to my brother's girlfriend, and completely unprompted by my mention of a similar habit, my brother also is responsible for littering the bedroom floor with, of all things, string cheese wrappers (I can see four from where I'm sitting on my bed). So, I'm guessing something might be hereditary, yes?

Anyway, I'm GOOD at cleaning. But I'm even better at giving my neurotic, anal, nit-picky, cleanly self a heart attack.

I mean, besides my habit of bringing food/drink into my bedroom and leaving the remains, I guess it's not that bad. It's mostly clothes, receipts, books, shoes. But all together, I can understand why my mom hates visiting me.

And now, back to my current task: completely reorganizing my clothing drawers (I have to, for the first time ever, carve out a lot of room--half a drawer--for work-out clothes). See, this is why I don't clean; I go crazy over which pairs of underwear go in the "period," "not gross enough for period, but not nice enough that I'd strip for someone if that's what I had under my jeans," "really cute, and in great enough shape that I wouldn't mind showing someone," and "ew, thong" groups. NOT JOKING.

(For any cute, single, women-liking men out there between the ages of 21 and 28 who have jobs and do not live with their parents, if you're reading this, I tend to keep common spaces clean. Also, the underwear I'd wear on dates is the stuff from the "really cute" or "ew, thong" groups. Just saying.)