As I’ve said many times on this blog, I am a classic Obliger, which means that, while I have a hard time getting myself to meet my own expectations I readily meet others’ expectations. How I wish, wish, wish that I had known this about myself 50 years ago! But Gretchen Rubin, the woman who came up with the Four Tendencies framework, wasn’t doing much writing then, as she would have been a toddler. Actually, I wish that I’d known about the Tendencies 53 years ago. I’ll be 65 at the end of this month, so 53 years ago I’d have been 12 years old. That’s a nice threshold age, I think.
You’re right on the verge of becoming a teenager and going into middle school. (Or “junior high school,” as we called it way back then.) It would have been truly great if I’d realized that I wasn’t lazy or unmotivated, that I didn’t have to be a procrastinator, but that I simply had a certain personality type and that I needed to work with it, not against it. I would have saved myself from beating myself over the head, and I would have been much happier. (Would you like to take the quiz to determine which tendency fits you? I would strongly advise you to do so. The result may surprise you—and give you some real insight into your behavior.)
So what does all of the above have with house showings? The answer is probably pretty obvious: they are a classic outer expectation. Other people are going to come traipsing through the house, looking into every cranny, and they’ll form an opinion of what kind of people we are by how the house looks. Plus, somebody needs to actually buy the thing. (Hey—are you in the market for a house? Go to realtor.com and take a look!) I realized as we went into having the house available weekend before last that I actually kind of enjoyed the pressure. I like the idea of always having the house in good order, but the reality of doing that often eludes me. Now I have no choice, as we never know when we’ll get a call for a showing, Technically they’re supposed to give us an hour’s notice, but if we’re not around to clean up then we’d better have left the house fit for public consumption.
It was interesting to me how I handled the Big Baking Bash last Friday as I wended my way through cupcakes, dip, and mini apple pies for the Cherry Creek Chorale reception that night. Usually the kitchen looks like a bomb went off in it when I leave the house for the concert, but I knew we’d be having showings the next day and I just couldn’t count on having time in the morning to clean it up. So guess what? I pushed myself to stay on top of things. Gideon got home from work a little early and he vacuumed the floor for me and wiped up some of the more obvious spots, but I had gotten the counters clean and loaded the dishwasher. It was truly amazing. And all because there was an outer push for me to have the place presentable.
When we get ourselves moved over to my dear in-laws’ I’ll have the outer expectation of keeping things neat as a part of another household. While we’ll have our own living space, the shared laundry room is downstairs. It’ll be good for me to remind myself every morning, ‘Jan may come down to do laundry today.’ That prod should be enough for me to get things straightened up. (I read once about a woman who said to herself every morning that her mother-in-law might drop by that day, thus giving herself enough of a shove to do the housework. While I consider Jan more of a friend/sister than a mother-in-law, the general idea should still work.)
Be sure to take the quiz and find out your own tendency, and then do some thinking about how you can work with yourself.
And, oh yes, watch our concert.