like mother...

If you know me, you know I like order. When I was little, I made little labels for the spines of my books and sorted them by subject and author. I kind of get a kick out of culling unused clothes out of our closet so we won't get over-cluttered. Dyami can't find the colander every so often because I have a new "system". And yes, I kind of like making all of the numbers match up (inflow! outflow!) on our budget.

So should it really surprise me that Lucy is just a touch...um...obsessive?

Scenes from a Budding Neatnik

Scene one: We invite two lovely (and slightly older) girls over to play. They get into three boxes of toys in the kitchen: plastic food, wooden fruit, and buttons/shells. They (gasp!) mix them up! It takes a while to convince Lucy that Everything will Be All Right.

Scene two: After a weekend of finishing a last minute gift, I leave my sewing machine, a few tools and some notions on the dining room table. At breakfast, Lucy blinks, looks over at me, and says, "Mama, sewing things kind of a mess. You clean up!"
I do not clean them up. At dinner tonight, I got admonished. Again.

Scene three: On our walk home from the park, Lucy notices a decorative arrangement of river stones and gravel along someone's yard. Dark river stones are placed in ovals around tree trunks. Lighter crushed gravel fills the rest of the space.
Except.
Some of the dark river stones are MIXED IN WITH THE CRUSHED GRAVEL! DESTROYING THE PATTERN!
We have to bargain for a while. I finally convince her that yes, the nice people with the messy yard do have people to sort out the stones.
I just hope they get on it, because we walk past that house nearly every day.

In an attempt to forestall this neat compulsion, I have decided to let things get a little messier around here. Like: I won't fold and roll the undies before I put them in the drawer. I won't sort salad forks and dinner forks within the little silverware compartment.
Plus--the sewing stuff? It's staying on the table. For now.
See how well we're doing?