The Pile

This picture was taken 2 years after this post was written, to prove that the pile is still alive.

Conrad and I, in our ten months of marriage, have this agreement. We both entered this union knowing that the other person's tidiness was polar opposite to our own. He is very neat. No junk on the floor, hang up your clothes when you're done with them, put stuff in the hamper, etc.  Then there's me. I leave the milk out on the counter for hours unless I'm reminded to put it away. I drop my clothes and make a pathway from the front door to the bedroom. I leave the bed unmade [though I must say, I'm getting better at making it more often]. I never do dishes. I don't even put them in the sink. Poor guy, cleaning up after me. 

It's obvious that whichever side of the bed I'm on is going to be the messy side. Luckily for us and our guests, my side is the side farthest from the door. You can't see my mess. We've started affectionately referring to it as "the pile." Lately, though, the pile has been getting a little out of control. You can't even see the floor. Conrad made an observation the other day about it. 

"If there are clothes on the couch and around the house, you know the pile is bad. You move locations when one gets too full."

Very wise, he is. The dumbest thing about the pile is that I hate it. It's not like I enjoy tripping on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. It's not like I like not knowing the difference between clean and dirty clothes. It's not like I love cleaning a massive pile for an hour and a half every other week. It just gets out of control. If I could just hang my clean clothes up, and put the dirty ones in the hamper (seriously, it's inches away. How hard can it be?)...

The pile. 

May cause slight to severe agitation when left unattended. May inflict stubbed toes and rug burn on knees from falling. May cause irritation when you are doing laundry and you realize there are ten things down there that need to be washed, but will have to wait til the next load. May induce procrastination.