This goddess ain't so domestic

My mother never prepared me for the wonders of domesticity. Growing up, there were frequently dishes in the sink and cat hair in the carpet. Brand new red shirts were thrown into the washer with white pants, and the effects were disastrous. Dinner was frequently pizza. The toilet paper never quite found its way onto the roll. She wasn't a slob – she was a young single mother.

When I first started living "on my own," I was a disaster. And so were my college roommates, but their disasters were due to the fact that their mothers had done everything for them. I did things for myself, but they were just taught to me all wrong.

Since I moved to New York, doing laundry has taken the form of rinsing out my fishnets and hanging them in the shower. Everything else gets bagged up and dropped off. I am baffled by the concept of doing laundry, and it's a skill I'd rather not cultivate. All the sorting and delicates and whatnot, just thinking about it makes me tired. Even when I was unemployed, I left it to the professionals.

Cooking took me a long time to get. I may be a master chef, but back in the early days, I felt fancy if I threw some frozen broccoli into the mac 'n cheese. The fish sticks and grilled cheese and TV dinners of my youth in no way prepared me to be the type of person who hosts dinner parties. That one I worked at, and I have four mouths that are glad I did every other Sunday.

I get messy, though. Very messy. I have a hard time getting a handle on small messes. They become big messes. I'm not dirty, though. There's an important distinction to be made between dirty and messy. Putting things away is something I can never quite bring myself to do. Clothes-wise, I live out of my laundry bag. Dishes sit in the dish drying rack until they are needed again. I sometimes don't wear earrings because I can't find any. I live in chaos.

When I go to my mother's house, though, I'm a little bit different. The first thing I do is put the toilet paper on the toilet paper roll. I do the dishes. I throw away things that have been in the fridge since 1981. I straighten up the pantry and put the stuff piled on top of the hamper into the hamper. There may be hope for me yet.