I'm wondering what's in me that's causing me to live in another house where people have loads of 'stuff'. Hmm, maybe a sign that I have loads of 'stuff' to transmute?
This house has 4 rooms upstairs, designed to be bedrooms. Three of them have beds, a chests of drawers and wardrobes. The girl's bedrooms have a double wardrobe in each and the parents have two double wardrobes. There is another room that doesn't have a bed in - no room for a bed. It has three double wardrobes and 4 chest of drawers all full and spilling over. There are piles of clothes on each chest and in the middle of the room.
A scene on Monday morning getting ready for school.
Emma to youngest daughter, "Which jacket do you want to wear?"
Daughter, 'The brown one."
"This one?" says Emma reaching over a pile of clothes into a wardrobe packed with small coats. She pulls out an imitation fur lined dark brown leather bomber jacket.
"No, the other brown one." And out comes another bomber jacket. This time lined with thinner material and a lighter brown. This is a perfect jacket for her life as a pretend boy. She puts it over her school uniform of black trousers, white shirt and black knitted, zipped jacket.
Emma turned to me. "She has loads of clothes but only wears a few favourites over again."
"Sensible girl." I thought. "This five-year-old's using her own strategy to not get overwhelmed."
Emma looks gorgeous every day, wearing beautiful clothes to work. So far she's worn understated elegant clothes in neutral colours of the earth. The policy in this house is to only iron clothes before wearing, because they just get messed up when stored ironed. So it's up early for her each day to get her clothes looking immaculate. Unusually, Craig does the ironing when he's home. "But he doesn't do anything else," she said "apart from maybe make some porridge." So Emma makes the packed lunches.
The kitchen cupboards are crammed with food, and so is the fridge and the two freezers. And they still shop every few days for food!
This is such a repeat of the house in America I was living in, but these people don't have the excuse of stocking up for a possible hurricane.
Emma knows she's a shop-a-holic and wondered out loud what the hole was she was trying to fill with all this shopping. I thought that was very perceptive of her to realise she was trying to fill a hole. She said "It's probably because we've been held up and not able to expand the business for so long."
I must analyse those dreams I've been writing down. Maybe they'll give me a clue as to why I'm repeating the living situation. Things have got a little better in my bedroom though, because the only things that are clutter in this room are the many tiny shoes under the bed that the youngest doesn't wear. Much improvement on the piles of boxes, and other junk higher than me that I had in the other place. Oh, and at my friend's house that I stayed in, between housekeeping jobs, I also stayed in a room full of junk. Sigh.
So if anyone reading this has any clues for me I'm very willing to consider your views.
