And suddenly I think, if my house is a mess anyway, why not have some fun?

I

baked freedom today.I baked freedom because my house is a mess.

My house is a mess because we just toiveled a new set of glassware and have nowhere to put it, because we’re in the process of putting up shelves, but ran out of screws.

My house is a mess because we have wooden shelves and metal brackets and a borrowed drill and various screwdrivers on the floor, and parts of the air-conditioning unit are sitting in the sink, for heaven’s sake. And because of the faulty AC unit, I was too hot to breathe yesterday, let alone clean up.

My house is a mess because it’s the kind of tiny, cozy house in which you can only dry laundry when the table is folded to fit the drying rack, can only host guests for meals if the kitchen stools are stowed in the bedroom. My house simply doesn’t have the capacity for all the personality we’re squeezing inside it.

On Thursday afternoon, the AC guy arrives. We strip the beds so he can climb on them, crushing my sheitel (which lives alternately on the bed by day or on the kitchen table by night, until the shelves are put up). He needs to stand on the couch, too, so we dump the couch cover, cushions, and an assortment of wires on the floor, too.

There are Shabbos groceries on the counter and a towel on the floor to cover a spill and the packaging from the glassware and the yes-toiveled-but-not-yet-washed glasses grouped on the fleishig side and the not-yet-toiveled glasses on the milchig side.

Panic floods. This does not look like the home of a good balabusta.

And there, at that crucial juncture in time, in she sweeps: the Voice. She lives in my head and she knows exactly how a home should run, how balanced meals should look, how a freezer ought to be stocked. Oh, how she knows.

She has mantras and she subtly threads them into my thoughts until hers are mine and we sound something like this:

My house is a mess, so I’ll never get organized.

My house is a mess, so I’m a failure.

My house is a mess, so I must be one, too.

No matter the AC, the glassware, the tiny apartment, the space-saving solutions we dream up to fit our lives into 20 square meters. No matter that Shabbos, our weekly reset, is coming: sparkling floors, white tablecloths on every surface, couch equipped with throw pillows and a neat pile of magazines. The Voice is ruthless.

I look at the mess and want to cry. I have no idea where to start. And the Voice, she snickers in my brain, taunting and pointing and shrilling, Your house is a mess, so what does that make you?

And suddenly I think, if my house is a mess anyway, why not have some fun?

(Excerpted from Family First, Issue 646)