I Need Gene Therapy

What is gone:
3 brown-spotted, half filled jars of apple sauce
a greenish jar of salsa
a blueish/blackish hunk of cheese
two pints of squishy, brownish strawberries
a bag of soggy, puke green lettuce
a baggie containing some reddish glop that looks like something found by a CSI pathologist

What remains:
very old, but still OK, beets which are currently in boiling water
24-count them- 24 little plastic containers of peaches
37-count them-37 containers of yogurt
an assortment of pickles, bright green lettuce, yellow cheese, and ONE jar of tannish apple
sauce
pink ground beef for tonight's meat loaf

Yes, you guessed it, I cleaned out the refrigerator....and I'm mortified. Embarrassed by the huge amount of food I tossed out and by the over-abundance of peaches and yogurt--although they WERE on big sale two weeks in a row!

When the kids were little and I was working full time, the refrigerator got cleaned out once a year during the summer. Once a year during the summer my closet got organized. Once a year during the summer I found how many tubes of toothpaste and packages of floss I had stock-piled during the year.

Now those tasks are getting done at least twice a year! But everything is just as big a mess as it was when organizing happened less often....and there's only two of us living in the house. What's wrong with this picture?

I think it's due to my lack of the cleaning gene. I confess to having kept the cleaning lady twice a month after I retired, so at least one week of every two, the house is clean. (Some of you may not know that I went back to work so that I could have a cleaning lady - no lie!) Ken picks up the slack and shines the floors and bathroom should we have company on a non-cleaning lady week.

I'm also missing the organizing gene. Why go searching through the refrigerator to see if there is applesauce when it's so easy to just pick up another jar? Why organize my basket of greeting cards when it is so much fun to spend 15 minutes going through 50 cards to find the one sympathy card I know is in there?

In reality, there is hope. My closet is actually in order, as is the bathroom closet, but it's mighty hard to keep up with all the places that need help. My niece reports that her mom, my sister-in-law Judy, regularly organizes her drawers and cabinets when she visits. If I fly you in, Judy, can you work your magic at our house, too? You've got the right genes!