Does tidiness depend on the beholder? Everyone has their own
sense of tidiness. Some people feel physically ill at the
sight of a messy house. When I see a balagan, I go
into a decline, and have no energy to do a thing, certainly
not enough to clear it up.
It is much more pleasant to live in a neat house.
Organization, tidiness, routine, order are all part of the
same syndrome. Dr. Skolnik, a psychologist, claims that order
is the norm for humans and natural to the world in general
and that a lack of neatness or order is deviant. When a house
is `managed' haphazardly with no fixed times for meals and is
generally run down, there is disorder. Tidiness is not just a
matter of well ordered shelves and neat drawers. It is a way
of life. In Judaism our lives are regulated by order,
seder. The ritual we follow on Pesach eve is called
the Seder.
We have to follow a particular regimen every day of our
lives. Three times are set aside for prayers each day; the
festivals follow each other in a set sequence in our fixed
calendar. This order, prescribed by the Torah, regulates our
lives. This Jewish regimen and schedule arouse feelings of
tshuva in us when things seem not to be in `order.' At
times of drought, for example, when there is no rain, things
are not in order and we resort to prayer.
Nature also follows an exact regularity of events. Day
follows night, the stars move in their fixed orbits and the
four seasons follow one another in patterned sequence.
Hashem's world functions in a well regulated way.
Children need routine and thrive on it. Even if their day is
regulated too rigidly, it is preferable to a disorganized
day. Order spells security and confidence to them and us; it
gives us a feeling of being in control of our lives. A
teacher who has an unruly class will be extremely strict in
her attempts to obtain discipline. The children learn that
discipline, order, is power. It gives the teacher control
over the class. Admittedy, order and system may have
unpleasant connotations. There is a price to pay for it but
the gains outweigh the losses. A disciplined class can
acquire knowledge.
*
After the birth of her youngest child, Sheiny took a
`vacation' -- she opted out of life. She had no relatives
living near her and only one or two in the country
altogether. She was dependent on the help of friends who
were, after all, mainly acquaintances. She ran away from life
and felt that everything was too much for her; it seemed to
her as if the ceiling were going to cave in on her. She
stopped cooking for the children and the laundry was hardly
tackled. In the mornings, children searched for clean socks --
forget about matching ones; school books and supplies were
sorely neglected.
What would have happened in the end is not hard to imagine.
Families have been broken up in the past and children placed
in foster homes. Fortunately, in this case, a cousin, Ruthy,
showed up and took charge, determined to prevent what seemed
the inevitable breakdown of the family.
We asked Ruthy how she tackled this monumental challenge. She
said she had simply put herself into Sheiny's shoes. "What
would I have wanted first and most if I were her? I would
have wanted someone to take my place for a limited period of
time, to take over the responsibility. And that's exactly
what I did."
It wasn't easy but Ruthy kept telling herself that it was all
only temporary. The state of affairs would correct itself and
things would sort themselves out. She took Sheiny to have a
medical check up and a blood test showed she was very anemic.
This was not the only cause of the breakdown but had helped
towards it. The lack of order in the house had bothered her
so terribly that she had escaped into a shell of
indifference.
When Sheindy saw that the house was habitable once again and
that everything was in its place, it spurred her onto the
road to recovery. Indeed, after some months, Sheiny came out
of the black clouds; she could not believe how low she had
sunk. She realized that she had made some mistakes to let
herself get to this state and hopefully, she would see the
warning signs in time on future occasions.
*
Order gives stability to people, says a well known rebbetzin.
A person who is orderly on the inside is always the same way
on the outside too.
Really? A picture of Aharon flashed into my mind. It is
difficult to describe him. He is not bothered if the house is
upside-down or if he is sloppily dressed. But Aharon has
another side to him. His notebooks of chiddushei Torah
are a dream. Tiny neat writing covers each page and he knows
exactly which asterisk refers to what note. It seems that
external tidiness does not play any part in his life. But
when it comes to anything pertaining to mitzvos, which
is most of his waking day, he is indeed very organized. He
just feels that these outer trappings are unimportant and not
worthy of the time spent on them.
A perpetually messy house is a sign of a mother who is tired
mentally and physically. It is not necessarily a pointer to a
sloppy housewife. There may just be too much work for one
pair of hands. Moreover, if there is a perpetual shortage of
money and the family has to run from one gemach to
another in order to try unsuccessfully to make up the
financial deficit, in the end something will snap. If a task
is impossible, you give up.
Extremes are never a good thing. One can be over-tidy or over-
organized as well. Remember the "civilized" nation, not so
long ago, which insisted on ordnung at all costs?
Tidiness can become a compulsion. There are some women who
clear the toys away before the children have finished playing
with them, or won't even let them take the games out of the
cupboard in the first place because they will mess up the
house. Children of such compulsive mothers learn that
cleanliness and tidiness are more important than anything in
life. They may even grow up actually feeling more comfortable
if the home is untidy. If it is an organized disarray, that
is fine. But if they have to waste precious time looking for
a hairbrush and various items of clothing before sending the
children off to school or if they are constantly searching
for documents which were not put into the right place for
some reason, even the most untidy people will realize that it
is to their advantage to get a little organized.
Are people born that way? The theory that if one was brought
up in a tidy house one will grow up that way, too, does not
always hold water. One can find untidy siblings and tidy ones
who had the same upbringing and the same set of parents. Not
to mention the geniuses, the absent-minded `professors' who
don't even know the meaning of the word neatness.
Children can definitely be trained to be neat and organized
as part of their daily routine from an early age onward. They
can put their own laundry into the appropriate hampers of
dark and light colors. They can check on their schoolbags in
the evenings to see that everything is in place, all
notes/tests etc. are duly signed and that no school supplies
are missing. They can prepare their own sandwiches and put
them in the fridge.
If you come into a house which has a superficial look of
chaos, however, don't be judgmental. The mother may be the
most wonderful mother in the world. She may be letting some
of the children paint, others mess around with play dough and
others build with many dozens of Lego blocks. A teenager may
be trying out a recipe on her own for the first time without
Mother's supervision. Does it matter that there is a pool of
red paint on the floor and over two radiators? Does it matter
that a girl spilled a glass of oil and the baby is crawling
in it with delight?
There is a time and a place for untidiness, too. Everything
in moderation.
