Convenient Mess

 No one likes mess. But "mess" has big advantages. Most kids know about mess because they hear about it every day. "Clean up this mess!" Children aren't invested with the same standards of neatness that we adults are slavish to. When they spread their little block builders all over the floor of their rooms and leave them there, they have a reason. The very next day, they are going to use them again. Maybe. Also, I have seen adult messes that make sense. A number of women I know, who work and rear families and are active in their communities, have them. They do not have magazine kitchens with nothing on the immaculate counters but the glint of quartz. Their counters are littered, some would use that term, with cereal boxes, herbs and spices, cutlery and unidentifiables put there by small hands. We'll say nothing about the floors and their obstacle courses. They are real people.  I had a mother-in-law who came from an era in which when you, as she told me, knew you were going to become a wife, studied homemaking. She had a job but before she donned the veil, she got into housewifery plans immediately. It was in the days when more than likely, babies would follow close on the trips to the altar, therefore, time was necessity. When she got her kitchen, Mary, we shall call her, had the Hope Chest emptied of its china bits and bowls, white linens and pots, now all shining on the shelves. Not only that, she had her tins and jars of tea and flour and other ingredients lined up on the counter, where she could find them in her sleep if necessary. Going further in culinary efficiency, she scanned her recipes so that a month of nutritious and hand made meals were posted on the wall, alongside the essential calendar that hung large and prominent for all to see the house schedule. When I married into the clan, she did not instruct me, but her favorite line was "I know you have your ways, but this is what I find successful". The "I" was stressed and meaningfully so. When I got my own roof to live under along with her only son, she surreptitiously inspected the kitchen for its effectiveness. I was under observation. She told me that I could save x number of steps if I placed certain items in certain places, "but that is only if this were my kitchen". Stress on the "my". I wasn't annoyed, I was too busy with a career and a baby and a big house in a big community to worry about the comment. My mother in law made the best roast beef dinners with those greasy bun things that smell up the kitchen with beef fat, but are absolutely delicious. I never could make them. So much for housewifery. My desk in what I call my Lady Lair, looks a mess. It's my mess exclusively, now that I am a widow. My dear husband used to wind his unused pencils into elastic bands, and the inside of his desk could have been used as a surgery, it was so immaculate. Mine, is quite another story. My desk is littered, some would say, with its mug full of pens and pencils and scissors and yes, a comb and a nail file. I have nail polish and cuticle oil handy, as well as a little dish of my favorite licorice drops. Just in case. Okay, I admit, there is a land line phone to open the front door, a messy, yes, hard copy file of addresses and phone numbers, an old lamp, not to mention the printer and numbers of USB cords hanging down to impeded access to the filing cabinet with its paper files that few use any more but that I like to hold in hand. It's a convenient mess.