Coming Clean

Hello. My name is Jody, and I am a little bit anal. This may come as a bit of a shock to those of you who thought you knew me, but it's true. Dirty dishes never sit in my sink, my junk drawer contains a labeled divider, and laundry baskets are rarely more than half-full. Sometimes when I look at my hand, it seems to be frozen in a position as if holding a can of Pledge, my finger ready to push the trigger at the first sight of dust. I have been known to Dust Buster crumbs off of Zoe's lap, I despise white spots on the bathroom mirror, and I bought myself a wall-mountable Shop Vac for Mother's Day so that I can keep dirt and crumbs out of my minivan. And yes, you might find a Swiffer cloth in the glove box.

Unfortunately for my family, my anal tendencies aren't just limited to cleaning and organizing closets. There are specific "zones" for everything in the pantry, I always know exactly what's in my freezer, and there is a designated spot for the ketchup in the refrigerator. Disturbing? Maybe, but I also never end up with four open bottles of ranch salad dressing or find a dish of mystery mold lurking in the back.

Staying organized amidst the addition of holiday food requires some skill. Suddenly there's large hunks of meat, obscene amounts of butter, and big bottles of booze that need to be chilled. In addition, I always like to have a spare loaf of bread in the freezer because, well, that's what anal people do. Since I don't want to own or organize a second freezer, space is at a premium.

What I really hate is when one of the kids leaves one ice cream sandwich or one waffle in a box that originally contained a dozen because then not only do I not know to buy more waffles, but the empty box is taking up space that would easily accommodate a loaf of bread, or even a bottle of vodka. Everyone that lives here has been told that if there are fewer than 10 crackers, less than a bowl of cereal, or two bites of ice cream left in the container, please suck it up, eat the last few bites and throw the packaging away!

After having this conversation no fewer than 127 times, you can imagine how happy I was when I was trying to get bread to fit into the already-full freezer, and found this container of chocolate chip ice cream taking up prime space right in the front:

That's when I decided to hell with the spare loaf of bread. This anal girl is obviously going to need to keep more vodka in the freezer if I'm going to survive the holidays. If someone wants a peanut butter sandwich on Christmas Day and finds that we're out of bread, then they'll just have to use crackers. After all, I'm sure there's a full box in the pantry, cracker section, subsection saltines.