I recently shared with my brother that my husband and I are finally organizing our kitchen this weekend, making things more efficient now that we have an extra shelf unit in our pantry. After yesterday’s work, our larger appliances no longer take valuable kitchen space and are instead neatly tucked away out of sight. Next, we’re getting ready to reorganize the canned and dry goods, as well as all of our spices, glasses, mugs and dishes. It feels wonderful!
Being the lord of the unblemished environment that he is, my brother congratulated me on our accomplishments so far: “Yeah! A convert to being organized!” he cheered.
But I’ve always been a convert on the inside, I told him.
“Yeah! A convert to actually acting out what’s on the inside and being organized!” he clarified.
But seriously, my TCK upbringing seems to have influenced me to suppress my ‘dream to clean’. While my brother reacted to the chaos of our family’s transient lifestyle by controlling, cleaning, and organizing his environment, I on the other hand developed a subconscioius resistance to putting effort into organization, because I figured that if I could count on anything it was that real life would come along to uproot and cause chaos all over again. I feared the futility of lost time and energy, so I just never botherd to begin with.
From my perspective, spending time and energy on organizing is a big ‘risk’ to take, because you never know when or how all of your efforts will be tossed out the window by life circumstances, like a sudden relocation which was most common to me as a child.
Nevertheless, this is what my husband and I are up to today, and I remain cautiously optimistic. At the very least, I’ll enjoy it while it lasts!
I’m moving Widsith into a more focused direction, and I’m excited about exploring Third Culture Kid life a little more deeply. However, I’ve appreciated all of your comments, and if you’re interested in any of the other topics I used to cover here, please contact me (tck.widsith [at] gmail.com). Thanks!