I mentioned in a comment to Indigo Bunting that I have both extravagant and frugal tendencies. You all probably know about my extravagant tendencies. My hatred and horror of economy class. My love of good food and wine. My addiction to travel – and that’s not back-packing travel. So yes, I can be very extravagant.
But equally, I am very frugal at times too. I mean, frugality comes naturally in some ways, as I grew up in a house where there was no spare cash to be thrown around. Treats were just that – rare and on special occasions. Money wasn’t spent unnecessarily. Leftovers were a staple. Purchases were planned. Things were fixed, not thrown out. Socks were darned. And so these days, now that I have self-employed time on my hands, I still follow through and compare the price of things at the supermarket, I drive to a different gym to save money on parking, and I hate throwing things away.
Which brings me to another contradictory tendency: to be neat, or not to be. You might recall that I often complain about the state of my home office; the piles of paper clogging up my desk, the boxes full of unsorted papers, the fact that I find the stairs up to the office, and the floor, to be very convenient filing places. When I was working full-time, and we had the luxury of a cleaner, the she commented that she would see a pile of papers downstairs (neatly tidied up, but not moved, in anticipation of her visit) for a week or two, then one day it would disappear. Then she’d find it hidden away somewhere upstairs! She laughed at this, not realising that I saw it as progress. Huh! Yes, I find it difficult to throw something away. There’s that feeling that I should keep it “just in case …” Yet when visitors arrive, our house is generally pretty spotless downstairs – all those piles hidden away out of sight. At work it was harder to hide. I had piles of paper on my desk – filing was so tedious I rarely got around to it. I knew where everything was though, even if my clear-desk-policy boss didn’t quite believe me. So my tidiness gene is lacking – or it only kicks in occasionally.
But then, when I’m at the small, boutique gym where I work out, I often find myself shutting all the locker doors – I tell myself it’s because I don’t want to hit my head against the sharp corners of doors that swing open. But really it is because I hate it when people leave the doors open, and it all looks messy. I’m slightly obsessive that way. And at the supermarket, it really annoys me if people put the small trolleys in the holder for the big trolleys. Especially when there is a large, red, sign that says clearly “large trolleys only.” Our dishwasher cutlery section has little places for the knives, forks and spoons. I put the spoons in the spoon holder, the knives in the knife holder, etc, and yet I am sure my husband (who is a bit of a neat freak) has never even noticed. Perhaps a best example of the contradiction of my messy and tidy urges has been the floor in front of my bookshelves. I left all my books scattered around on the floor – books returned from book club, or from my mother-in-law who periodically borrows from me – until I could organise the shelves precisely as I wanted. Those books sat there for weeks, no months … I hesitate to say years, but it is possible, I just can’t remember. Anyway, right now I feel good. The shelves are organised, painstakingly (anally some might say), to my exact requirements. Not a book out of place. A good start to the New Year!
Contradictions – I guess they make life interesting.
A Separate Life 