My daughter Alex told me recently that I don’t like to leave home.
“You’re an Enneagram Six Mom, which is why you act like that before we go on vacation,” she said. The Enneagram is a system of nine personality types combining traditional wisdom with modern psychology — a powerful tool for understanding ourselves and the people in our lives.
“Like what?” I cocked my head in query. “I love to travel.”
“Mom, you know how you get before vacation,” Alex smirked.
I answered like a Southern belle, “Why, whatever, do you mean, child?” Then I turned back into me and sternly chided, “It’s called nesting — and there is a purpose for it.”
The know-it-all daughter shook her head, laughed and responded with a sarcastic, “Uh-huh.”
My 14-days-out pre-vacation habits are perfectly logical:
1. Clean out the refrigerator — all of it. If I die on vacation, I don’t want someone coming into my house, opening up the fridge and judging my housekeeping skills. Compost or feed the wildlife any vegetables that will spoil while gone. Add two parts hot water and one part vinegar to a glass spray bottle, then add the lemon essential oil and clean all the shelves and cracks and crevices. Let’s face it — the fridge only gets cleaned when I go on vacation.
2. Clean out bedroom closet and organize shoes and boots. I’m packing so I may as well do double duty and match.
3. Mop all floors and vacuum. See last sentence of No. 1 — same.
4. Water everything in the gardens and plant anything still in purchased pots, then the day before we leave, decide it’s okay to have 10 new hostas still in pots, as I do every year.
5. Write down, “Dust house” on my to-do list, then be content when it doesn’t happen. Put another check-mark next to mop all floors and vacuum, so I feel better about getting that chore done.
6. Clean the bathroom.
7. Wash and wax my car, organize my books by color, systematize my office, wash my curtains, paint a few walls, declutter the garage, darn the holey socks, weed, rent some goats to clean-out the fence-line… for starters.
I’ve got a couple weeks to nest — maybe this year I won’t wait until the eve of vacation before packing. Nah, who am I kidding?
