The house inspection (wo)man cometh.

My approach to the topic of tidiness in the years following my metamorphosis from a teenaged slug to a semi-adult baboon could perhaps be summed up in the phrase 'messy but hygienic'. There might be crap throughout the house, office etc but the desk and carpet under it will be more or less clean. This has worked well for me thus far and I have even managed to find myself a partner who seems to operate on a similar basis give or take the odd 'right, clean up your shit, i can't find the dog'-type comment when it all gets a bit too much.

My desk at university is the same - technically there are 3 people in my office, but in their regular absences my stuff seems to creep (run?) for freedom to desks where they won't be suffocated by piles of other important but unreachable stuff. Not a good look I know but my junk takes on a life of its own and things just seem to spread out despite my best intentions (no doubt much to the annoyance of my office mates!).

My brother, on the other hand, is a neat freak. When I was 17 I went travelling with him to Europe via Argentina. Unfortunately this involved us sharing a hotel room - sort of like putting Barney from the Simpsons in the same room as Marge (or Joey from Friends in with Monica - funny how it's always the guys that are messy in those stories). But I digress. The short version was that after about 24 hours in Argentina (our first stop on the trip), when I had spread out in my usual fashion, my brother literally drew a dividing line down the middle of the hotel room. He strictly enforced this for the rest of the trip, much to my amusement - I couldn't see why he had a problem with my underwear, books, clothing, CDs, toiletries etc invading his space but clearly there were some unresolved issues that I wasn't going to push too far given that he was paying for the hotel room.

Which brings me to my current dilemma - the house inspection this afternoon. We live in a fabulous rental place in the not too dodgy side of town, but I suspect that the rental agent will not take my word for it that the house is clean - give or take the mountains of shit liberally sprinkled everywhere. So last night and parts of the preceeding week have been spent relocating our crap. I always thought it was a humorous exaggeration when you saw people putting things under the carpet in films but there is now a suspicious 'pile of misc clothes-shaped-lump' under my duvet (and no, dammit, I will NOT say 'doona', no matter how long I live in Oztrailer!).

The house is, as always, hygienic - but I'm just hoping that the agent has at least a smidgeon of my tolerance for mess....