Don’t look in my linen closet!

On second thought – take a look. It’s beautifully organized. The blankets are folded and neatly placed on the shelves. The sheets are folded and sorted by flat, fitted, and size. The pillow cases are neatly stacked, and the top shelves have all my holiday decor linen. It’s an organizers’ dream linen closet. MY dream linen closet.

So why did I title this, don’t look in my linen closet, when it’s so neat and orderly? The reason I stated that is because I don’t want you to get the wrong impression of me or judge me based on that perfect linen closet. My dream of this linen closet goes back to a movie I saw when I was younger and something sparked of wanting to have a perfect closet to store my sheets and blankets. Let me give you some background real quick.

Growing up, my mom owned a printing company and worked around the clock. She was a big deal because she was the first woman to own a printing company by herself in our state. This meant lots of social affairs, big business opportunities, speaking conferences, the list goes on. Because she was working hard to achieve her goals, my younger sister and I were raised by our grandmother, for the most part. Don’t get me wrong – my entire family lived in my grandmother’s house while my grandmother lived in the attached apartment. So my mom wasn’t out chasing her dreams while she ditched us at home for her mom to raise.

We liked being with my grandmother. She was the best Southern cook around, she took us on road trips, catered all  my mom’s social parties and let us taste a bit of everything she made, made us the most delicious PB&J sandwiches after school, and was a safe haven when we were scared. My sister and I were happy.

The linen closet – right, I’m getting there.

Anyways, needless to say, my mom wasn’t at school functions or did any of the normal stuff housewives did back then. She was blazing her own trail and – looking back – during that time, it took a lot of courage, dedication, and hard work to do what she did at that time in which she did it. But being a kid with a mom like that? It was hard to see the bigger picture. I just wanted my mom to be more involved.

The decision was made during those younger years of about eight, that I was going to be a stay-at-home mom when I got married and had kids. I would attend all school functions, pack lunches each day, drive them to their extracurricular activities, host Tupperware parties, be an active member of the school PTA, carpool for school, and live in the most perfect neighborhood in which all my friends were also housewives and stay-at-home moms.

While watching a movie around that time, a lady in the movie (a housewife, of course) opened her linen closet to put away freshly laundered sheets. The look of the linen closet made my eyes go wide. It was organized! All the sheet sets were folded and put together in a neat little bundle in the order of fitted sheet on the bottom, flat sheet, and pillow case on top. All matching. The entire closet was that way! Was that real?! Did linen closets really look that way?

It was decided right then and there that in addition to living the most perfect stay-at-home mom life with my husband and kids, I would also have the most perfect linen closet one has ever seen. It completed my perfect picture of what my life would be.

Fast forward about thirty years – am I living that perfect dream? Let’s take a look.

My husband and I have four kids. I work full time at home. My body is in constant pain preventing me from cleaning regularly, so most of the time my house is in a disarray, and, if I’m honest, I’m hesitant about having people over because of the state of our living room furniture and carpet. (Our puppy decided to eat all the couch cushions and then he vomitted it all over the carpet. Yeah – it’s gross.)

I attend some school functions and am not an active PTA member. Our kids ride the bus to school where they eat school lunch because I’m a zombie each morning from the previous night of no sleep and cannot remember how to put together a sandwich at 6:30 am. They have no extracurricular activities because I’m scared of being trapped by strangers and the overwhelming fear of having an upset stomach and no access to a bathroom.

I’ve never hosted a Tupperware party, but I did attend one a few weeks ago. It was fun because I got to make the drinks and I made them strong. I do live in a good community, but I have the worst lawn out of the entire neighborhood because one day I got a wild hair up my butt and decided to rip out all the bushes and grass from the flowerbeds bordering the porch. They are still gone one year later because I’ve yet had that same wild hair to replace the pulled out bushes with new bushes.

While walking through my house, you will most certainly find a stray sock or two, a half eaten pizza slice, popsicle sticks, “art” taped to the wall with an entire roll of tape, pieces of paper towels and toilet paper where the puppy had gotten into a trash can, laundry piled up in the laundry room, dishes piled on the kitchen counters, and urine on the sides of the toilets. It’s like a giant seek and find in our house at any given time.

I’ll ask again – am I living that perfect dream? You damn right I am. Because have you seen my linen closet?!

 

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