The Nesting Instinct aka Woman Possessed

You’ve probably heard that a lot of women experience the need to clean and organize when they are pregnant.  This need is often referred to as ‘nesting’.  Some people believe that nesting is a sign that labour will start soon (they are wrong).  If that were true, then I’ve been about to go into labour for 9 months.

I’ve always been ridiculously organised.  Maybe not to the same level of ridiculous as some bloggers I’ve come across, but not far off.  My kitchen pantry was introduced to my label maker long before I was gestating.  I think it was in my toddler years that I discovered how much time could be saved if every item I owned had a home and got put back in its home after use.  Being organised has definitely served me well as a teacher, to the point I’ve offered courses in getting organised to colleagues in my school board, and have always attempted to instill good organisational skills in each one of my students. (If good organizational habits aren’t modelled at home too, well, I’m not a miracle worker!)

I wouldn’t have thought that the nesting instinct in pregnancy would affect me much, aside from feeling the need to prepare the nursery, of course.  Oh, how wrong I was.  I took my brand of crazy to a whole new level.  It wasn’t just about making sure every cupboard, drawer, and closet got vacuumed, scrubbed, and re-organized.  There were some other spaces for which I developed temporary OCD, like…

 …the top of my dresser and the window nook of my bedroom.  Makes total sense that they would need to look as fresh and feminine as possible before Baby arrives, right?  New candles, a new throw cushion, some faux flowers.  Total necessities.

And then there’s the space at the top of the stairs…

I became temporarily obsessed with replacing the clunky bookshelf we used to have with something lighter and brighter.  But we couldn’t anchor our new shelves to the wall without painting it first, and then I had to have the window seat cushion recovered in something fresh and light (with matching throw cushion on the chaise!).  Hmm, this is seeming more and more like a staging instinct…

It gets worse.  When I was just past 3 months pregnant, I came back from visiting my dad over March Break and, riding the nesting wave, tore apart my walk-in closet. Rods, rails, and shelves – gone! I sanded and painted the inside once it was gutted, only to realise that I didn’t have the construction know-how to find studs (the kind in walls, not hot men…) and install the new closet ‘system’ I had bought.  My husband was a very good sport.  Truthfully, I think he was quite perplexed by my behaviour…maybe a wee bit terrified.  There was no reasoning with me.  I needed to redesign my closet.  (Never mind the fact that we hadn’t touched the nursery at this point!) PS – The pics of my closet don’t do it justice. I haven’t yet mastered the art of photography like many other bloggers!

Next up, the laundry room. (Did you think I was finished???) I love that our laundry room is situated on the same level as the bedrooms; so convenient.  It was painted a dark grey though, which would have been perfectly lovely if there was a source of natural light in the room. As it stood, though, it was kind of cave-like.  A lot of people wouldn’t care, but these are probably not the same people who do the laundry for the household. (Mmmhmmm, you know it!)

My mom came to visit us for a few days, and she took on the laundry room makeover. Everything came off the walls, which she then scrubbed and painted.  I found some new storage solutions and drying racks, and my husband had another excuse to get out his level and drill and do ‘manly jobs’ to finish the room.

Along with all these big and small nesting projects, I also re-styled our fireplace mantle, tore apart the linen closet, re-organized every cupboard in the kitchen (now all my blue dishes are in one place and this brings me a very zen feeling…again, SO important for the baby to have a cupboard of strictly blue dishes…), and I even organised my car’s trunk.

I may come by my organizing instincts naturally, but nesting has taken it from being a simple passion of mine to being a compulsion that must not be ignored.  I wonder if I’ll revert to my normal level of organisational insanity once Baby is here?  Stay tuned!