Life as a single guy

First off, I have to give a really big shout out to my man Chris for winning Survivor: Vanuatu tonight and in my mind, claiming the mantle of Best Survivor Player Ever. Just beating out Brian (the used-car salesman and winner of Survivor: Thailand) and Richard Hatch (the winner of the original Survivor). Chris should get more points because the other two played from the lead and he played from behind the entire game. He single handedly costs his tribe the first challenge but convinces the others to keep him around. When there was a solid all female alliance and he was the last man he kept on finding a way to last one more round. And when he needed to win immunity those last few times he pulled it off. Just a killer season of the show. Next year, 20 players, which will really screw up my statistical model of the game but I’ll talk more about that some other time.

Made an interesting realization today and it’s about life as a single guy. Single guys have very specific routines to deal with the fact that they are single guys. I’m not talking about the check that the door is locked five times obsessive compulsive routines, I’m talking about the way guys deal with the fact that their mom is not going to clean up their apartment for them. And the only way a guy can survive life without that built in maid service is by creating a schedule and sticking to it.

Here’s what I’m talking about. I’ll never get the idea of “You know what, I really feel like cooking chicken tonight so I should go to the grocery store and just buy all the stuff that I need for dinner tonight.” Grocery shopping is done every other weekend, Saturday morning if I’m not hungover, Saturday afternoon otherwise. I shop in the exact same order, pick up the same items, and can tell you to almost the item what is in the fridge based on exactly how long it has been since I’ve been shopping. If I get a feeling for something different that means that it is time to go to a restaurant. Why do I do this? Because I certainly don’t trust my cooking skills to create a spur of the moment masterpiece.

Cleaning works the same way. And I’m almost certain that every guy with his own apartment (at least until he has been on Queer Eye) has this same routine. When the clothes hamper is overflowing and you can no longer shove the clothes in any farther you then wait for a weekend where there are a lot of good games on tv and you do laundry. This is done by separating the clothes on your living room floor into piles of approximately the same color. Anything that looks like it might need special care goes back in the hamper on the idea that you will get back to it later. For sweaters, later means June. You then do the random piles of laundry and watch the games. When they’re done you throw the clothes in the one laundry basket you own. At halftime, you make the decision to actually fold the clothes and match the socks, which usually means having more piles of clothes on the floor, on the dining room table and anywhere there is space. If it needs ironing, you typically decide that it is worth dry cleaning instead (and you get free hangers that way). By the time the last game ends you have a filled laundry basket in your living room. Where it stays for a good week before you decide that you might as well put the clothes away. Incredibly, without this routine I would have to buy clothes every month since it is the only way that I can actually do laundry.

All other cleaning chores work the same way. Once a month, you’ll look around the apartment and go, “God, this place is a mess” and decide to clean it up. In the exact same order every time. Which means, there is that one last room that never gets cleaned. It’s where all of the stuff that you moved out of another room ends up. The papers that are taken from the living room end up in the spare bedroom and never leave. But since it is a spare bedroom that never gets used it’s not a problem, right?

The incredible thing is that if I suddenly get the idea that my DVD collection needs to be alphabetized by genre I will do that on a moments notice. I took two hours of my day last week to alphabetize my CD collection and I was actually looking forward to that. Those are things that guys actually enjoy. Cleaning the kitchen ranks slightly below vasectomy by weed wacker on the list of things that guys want to do. So, if you ever are in my apartment (and I know a number of you are going “God forbid” but bear with me) and start to wonder why there are dishes still in the sink, a laundry basket sitting on the couch, but a stereo system has been tweaked to provide the optimum sound for individual albums with presets made for each individual album, just know that all that is is part of my grand plan for dealing with life.