Stretching beyond my OCD...otherwise known as "Let it go!"

Okay so I don't really know if I have OCD, but I do know this...I am a neat freak.  I like things in their place, not too many things in their place because more is not better in my book! I like things clean and neat, even if I am leaving the house. Why? God forbid, the robber find my bed unmade or dishes in the sink.  Seriously, that has gone through my head.  Kinda like, you better be wearing good undies in case you get in a car accident and they have to strip you down.  I think I heard this from my Grandmother and it has haunted me for 40 + years, but that's another story.

As I left my house today, I had to let go of control.  Major, no maybe minor strides forward in the OCD camp. Because my house is a bloody nightmare on Christmas steroids mess.  Tom agreed to some great people that "oh heck yes, WE would love to be a part of the Christmas tour!"  And then brought me the three page agreement, and oh by the way, they will be here tomorrow to tour the house so they can start planning.  That was in September. I agreed, did I REALLY have a choice, not so much.  It will be cool.  No biggie.

Fast forward to this weekend.  November 15th, THREE weeks before the event, and they are wanting to start decorating.  Okay, sure you can leave the 6 carloads of garland, Christmas trees, wreaths, more garland...on the porch.  Oh, what's that...wait, you want to start decorating now??  

I am now in my own home, the home that vaguely feels like my home but is more like a Christmas store in Estes Park than my home.  And I am leaving for Vegas tomorrow, luckily and thankfully.  But wait...huh?  Now I have to take ALL of my stuff, my lovely coffee table books, candles, family pictures, collectable this and that, and put them away so that they won't get mistakenly sold on December 4, 5, or 6th.  AND, all of my artwork on the walls has to come down.  SOOOOO...this led to what I prefer to call a "teaching moment" between my gracious and giving husband and myself.  It roughly went like this:  big breath in before I spoke, "honey (hopefully I said honey) YOU HAVE GOT TO PAUSE BEFORE YOU SAY YES TO EVERYTHING, because when you just say HECK YES to anything people ask you, I OFTEN SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES” (or Marianne, our amazing assistant, but this was all about ME clearly, in the moment.)  He smiled and said, "I will work on that."  PAUSE......So this is where I think, okay, is he just trying to get me to shut up so he can take his nap...or did he really hear me and is going to process this whole thing and really work on it?  Because that really IS a great answer, right?  "I will work on that," every wife's dream answer just occurred.  Now in the past I would have had to go through it all again, to make sure that it wasn't just a blow-off, but seriously, I was just too darn tired.

So there you have it.  My house is a tchotchke Christmas winter wonderland (that might be an oxymoron, or something like that) with glitter sparkling on every piece of upholstery, bins piled to the ceiling, strangers in my home pounding nails in my walls… AND I am leaving today.  I am ironically singing the song from the movies Frozen…”Let it go, let it go! Can't hold it back anymore. Let it go, let it go! Turn away and slam the door!"  Yes, those really are the lyrics and yes, Grandmother, I have on nice clean undies.