Things in My House that I Wish Would Just Take Care of Themselves

By Catherine Rose

I’m a pretty positive person and I would say I’m also a pretty organized person. But I swear some parts of my life feel very out of control. Not like the neighbors are calling my mom to say, “Get up here, your daughter needs you”—but definitely curious enough that if you look closely, you’d probably wonder, “Wow, does she even care?”

This is going to sound like a lot of complaining, but really it’s my response to the special needs world closing in on me. Sometimes you need to come up for air!

I wish these things would just take care of themselves:

The leaves from last fall on the front porch. I mean, it’s not like I was just keeping them around for an Autumn-themed house. And you know what, it doesn’t look good. But I guess as fall is coming soon to New England, maybe they’ll get comingled with the leaves from this year and jump off the front porch. And how about the nice touch that the spider webs on the front porch windows add? I think these two things definitely make my house have substantially more curb appeal. Or maybe I’m just prepared ahead of time for my Halloween decorating?

The dishes in the sink that multiply while I’m not looking. I think it might happen in houses around the country, but I’m pretty sure that the dishes should be limited in my house because I rarely cook. And if I do cook, I usually limit it to “the things I can cook in one pot without setting off the fire alarm.” And to be completely honest, my husband usually has to taste-test and then provide some crucial ingredient to make it palatable.
The folded clean laundry that sometimes occupies all laundry baskets. My housekeeping skills limit themselves to being able to throw all laundry into the washer and then remembering about 12 hours later to put them in the dryer. Believe me, no clothing item survives my wash-dry process—all colors in the same load, all items into the dryer for approximately 30 minutes.

The papers. I mean the mail, the healthcare paperwork, the IEP drafts, the fliers I pick up at seminars, the bills. I wish one day they would just sort themselves. I do pretty well making sure that the mail is triaged—junk removed immediately. But it seems our kitchen counter is collecting items. If the sink collects dishes, I suppose the counter is just jealous and needs to collect papers. But really, both of the kids have IEPs and each IEP is about 20 pages long. And I haven’t seen a doctor report that is less than 8 pages long, so it means the paper piles up quickly. (It’s way ahead of the dishes!)

Phone calls. I know these aren’t physical things, but it sure seems like each day I have about 10 different phone calls that I need to make just to keep the house, the kids, and the disorganization organized. My oldest daughter has about 10 regularly seen doctors—so appointments to keep, prescriptions to follow-up on, updates and status reports to provide to each of them for whatever is going on. Then there are the medical supplies which I still don’t understand why I can’t just go push a button somewhere on Amazon and get a magic delivery of everything we need. 1-stop-shop would sure be nice for medical supplies… maybe it’s a new business venture!

In a given day, I do wish some of these things would just take care of themselves—so that I might have extra seconds in the day for another snuggle from my girls, or I might be able to read about that awesome organization that my friend swears about, or I might be able to schedule my own doctor appointment. Or maybe take a nap? Is that too much to ask?

Maybe you have things in the day you’d like to wave a magic wand at, what are they? (And as I understand, magic wands don’t work on people….)

Catherine Rose is the inventor of the amazing LightAide, but her most important job is mom to Alexis and Jessica. You can read more about Catherine on her blogs, Schnaderbeck Family and Dr Catherine Rose, or follow her on Twitter @drcatherinerose.