Company Ready

Growing up in the south, people believed in keeping a room or sometimes even the whole house “company ready.” Meaning, at any time of the day or week, anyone could walk into your home and not be overwhelmed by your life or belongings. Things would be neatly tucked away. Beds made. Knick knacks dusted.

In my mother’s house, her living room was always company ready.

The only thing that ever disturbed her peace was my father’s jacket and trucker’s hat that he would leave hanging off the back of a chair or tossed on her coffee table. She would quietly relocate his things, and much to her ire, he would place them right back in the same place when he came home from work.

There seemed to be an unspoken power struggle over the living room and its true purpose. Was it a place for daddy to relax after a long night’s shift or was it a place for the company that we rarely received? It was always a bit unclear to me growing up.

If we did lounge in her living room while she was away, we couldn’t leave any evidence. After work, she inspected every punched pillow for its placement, repositioned every picture, and eyeballed every whatnot. Things had to be as she had placed them before. If they weren’t…

My mother got this from her grandmother. In my grandmother’s shotgun house, she swept the dirt in the front yard smooth. The living room was the space where everything happened: doing hair, plucking tunes on the out-of-tune piano, reading the Bible, staring out the front window while watching her grandkids.

She kept the front room tidy. There was barely enough space for a couch, I think. And that piano. Not much else. And nothing was ever out of place.

She and my great aunt slept in the middle room off the living room. It was a pass through to the kitchen, so her bed was always made. My aunt was always in her bed under three heavy quilts with the gas stove on. Passing through that space felt like walking through a furnace in the middle of a hot Georgia summer.

The kitchen was small but tidy. My grandmother would cook, clean, and boil water for bathing and washing clothes. There was always something hot bubbling on her stove and a warmth in that space.

Back then, simple people kept simple homes that were always company ready. They didn’t have much, but what they did have was proudly on display. Their precious items were dusted, wiped down and polished. There was no need to rush around tidying up before company came. They just opened the door, smiled, and asked if y’all were hungry.

Fast forward to my home today.

My home is never company ready. It’s always in a state of half-finished projects in almost every room.

I’m currently fascinated by Marie Kondo.

I’ve binge watched her Netflix show and started my tidying. I’ve purged bags of clothes, that continue to pile up in my foyer. My books are pulled from my book cases.

It honestly looks like a war zone in my home.

My “company ready” stash-and-dashes over the years have resulted in a basement overflowing with bags and bins of collected things — papers and random things caught out of place. I can’t imagine doing the tidying on my papers. It might take a year to sift through mountains of that stuff.

The main spaces in our home are rarely dusted, messy, and, lived-in (as I like to think). I do feel a tinge of shame over the state of my home sometimes, but, I know I don’t tidy every day. I’m not quite ready to be featured on Hoarders. Not quite, or so I tell myself.

On top of this, I am part of the working disabled community. I work from my home and go with my energy on any given day. My work spills over to my home life. Everything is everywhere.

I’m also homeschooling my daughter who is 11, almost 12. She is chronically messy. I stopped stressing myself over her space a while ago.

When ever I know company is coming, I turn into some other person. My mother. I see my home through her eyes and it is not pretty. I whip myself and my kids into a cleaning frenzy. For what? For company. I try to get the house company ready.

So now my kids dread company. They know that whenever we have company, mommy gets stressed out and I, in turn, stress them out. My oldest sent me this video once:

It’s a vicious cycle that I wish to break before I ruin my relationship with them. Company ready is an unrealistic standard that I have forced upon myself and my family.

What does this have to do with my writing?

I believe that I apply the company ready standard to my writing. I’m a bit of a messy writer, starting projects that never quite get done. I’m a perfectionist who is also a messy, obsessive-compulsive germaphobe. I scrub my writing until it shines.

When I thought of writing here on Medium, I was initially excited by the possibility. I read a lot of posts across several topics. I poked around different peoples pages to see what I liked and what I wouldn’t replicate. I joined the partner program to see if I could possibly supplement my family’s income while writing from home.

If you come to my Medium profile, you’ll notice nothing is there. A blank slate.

In my mind, my empty Medium page is company ready. Ha!

My perfectionist self wants to launch with a carefully curated publication and be able to post regularly. She wants to be company ready before hitting that first publish button.

Thing is, I rarely entertain company in my home these days. Folks don’t drop by like they used to. Now, I worry about whether folks will drop by my Medium site either.

What’s the point of writing with company in mind? I have been trained to write with company in mind. Write for a particular audience. Proofread your words. Create symmetry and a thread for the reader to follow. That’s what I do in my professional life.

I came to Medium in order to relax my “company ready” standard. I want to experiment with writing like I really live. Show y’all my messy sock drawers, pile of unwashed dishes, and stack of unopened mail.

I will be writing about my un-curated life and sharing my thoughts on a variety of topics that I care deeply about, such as disability, politics, diversity and inclusion, raising a family in the south, and overcoming fear. I’m probably not going to write about writing much. There’s a lot of great people doing good work in that area.

The main thing I am learning from Marie Kondo is that I should do tidying for me and my family. Not for company. The reason I’m joining Medium is to write for myself. I have things that I need to say. For me. For my sanity.

Not for company.

Related posts:

TRADE XCT NOW ON METAMORPH PRO!. “xCrypt Listed on METAMORPH PRO!!!” is published by xCrypt — Digital Asset Exchange.

Just a few days after I started running for Attorney General, a retired Missourian went online, saw the website, and hit the “About” page. He read it and started laughing. “Almost made a tackle…

A very advanced group of humans who are already on the next stage of our evolution before everyone else. Now all they have to do is figure out how to “pull” the rest of humanity up to their level.