From Sandra Felton’s The Messie’s Manual: The Procrastinator’s Guide to Good Housekeeping (my comments are in parentheses)

0 – No one cares to enter your home (call city code compliance)

1 – Fools rush in where angels fear to tread (could be eligible for an episode of Hoarders)

2- If you had to, you could find at least one clean towel (this actually happened at our house a few weeks ago – mini towel crisis) 

3 – The dishes are clean, but stay out of the upstairs bath! (Even on a good day, I’m thankful for the downstairs powder room)

4- At least once a week, everything’s spotless–for a day! (Oh, to have a spotless house, even for just a day!)

5 – You can read a book without overwhelming guilt. (Okay, I can read even with things in shambles around me. My guilt shows up when someone’s at the door)

6 – The minister’s wife can call without panicking you. (At this point, I would need the better part of a day just to get the downstairs presentable with crisis cleaning)

7 – You can hold elaborate luncheons twice a week and have everything neat by 3:30 p.m. (Wow, there are people who can do that?)

8 – You gave away the dog and made the kids understand. (I would give away the kids, they’re messier…just kidding, girls!)

9 – Your kids aren’t allowed downstairs except to eat–neatly. (We all remember visiting homes as a kid where no one was allowed in the living room, like a museum without the velvet rope)

10 – No one dares to enter your home. (plastic protectors everywhere)

Not very many of us are 0s or 10s, Sandra Felton (another Sandra!) says, and no one really wants to be a 10. Some days I’m a 2, others a 3. I’d like to be a 7–that would be awesome–but I’d settle for a 5 or 6. How about you?

As a creative, right-brained person who is often in her own little world, I found a kindred spirit in reading books on “Messies” by Sandra Felton (another Sandra!). She says that people who have trouble keeping up with clutter and housekeeping chores are often easily distracted, visually tune out from their surroundings (lolling about in la-la land like me because we’re daydreaming), and have disorganized thinking (did it take you a long time to learn left and right? me, too).

We are all born with tendencies and raised in situations that can aggravate negative habits, but I believe that God wants to help us be over-comers so we can bless others and so we can have what Youth Pastor Brandon Smeltzer calls Grace Stories.  I can’t do this on my own, but “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” – Php. 4:13