The Demise of Perfection

As you have learned from many past posts, I am a huge fan of organization. If it can be alphabetized, color coded or sorted into bins I am all over it. However, I must clarify: I am not a neat freak. Little piles of clutter will eventually get to me but it's not the type of thing to drive me up the wall. Books arranged by color*, on the other hand, oh my god. SEIZURES!**

My quest for perfection is useful but also damning. I have the personality wherein I refuse to do something half-assed. Sounds great, right? WRONG. If I don't have the time, energy or mental preparation necessary to do it the right way, I'll just leave it undone until I have the time. Which is, never.

Jump to my current predicament: laundry. In the division of household chores laundry is solely in my domain. The washing and the drying are no problem, but I always get hung up on the folding. No matter how hard I try I always feel like I never get caught up with the folding. Every morning the hubby and I play a little game called "which pile of crap are my undershirts in?" It's super fun.

My problem, at the root, is two-fold: 1) the hubby goes through two t-shirts a day - one white undershirt for work and one graphic tee for home and sleeping; 2) I like to fold the t-shirts just so*** and make tidy little stacks. A few days ago I started to panic - what will I do once the baby gets here? I'll have more chores to do and less time to do them! Something has to change.

As of this week's laundry cycle I have stopped. folding. t-shirts. Not my t-shirts, mind you, I'm not truly capable of change. I've just given up on folding the hubby's shirts. He doesn't care, it saves me time, and once I close the drawer I can pretend its contents are folded. I did, however, put my little OCD spin on the non-folding endeavor. I took some scrap cardboard and whipped up a quick drawer divider so I can at least separate undershirts from graphic tees.

I have a sinking feeling this is just one of the many things I am going to have to learn to let go. *sigh*

*Who does that? Not only is it a little too Rainbow Brite for me, but how do you find a book? I don't remember my books by color, as the article suggests. I remember them by title and author. LIKE A NORMAL PERSON.
**Now I've offended people with seizures. Obviously I don't have real seizures. I'm just a jerk.
***I have one of those folding contraptions Sheldon used on Big Bang Theory but that doesn't speed things up. It just makes neater stacks.