Your Home Holds Your Stories

What the pest-control man teaches us about storytelling + memoir

Husband (9:30 p.m.): Orkin is coming tomorrow morning at 8:30.

Me (tucked peacefully in bed under the covers, looking out at the chaos that is our house): —.

You should know, I love our Orkin man. His name is Tom.* He comes to our country house every other month to spray for pests, check on the status of the ants and the critters. Once, his colleague told us we have mice and snakes living in our attic. Tom told us (off the record) that it’s not true. Tom saved us $16-30k (the literal range of the quote if we pledged that we’re military or educators, which we’re not), plus I just felt warm and fuzzy inside knowing that he likes us enough to tell us the truth.

*Tom’s name has been changed to protect his innocence.

Tom has seen me and my house in every state imaginable. Morning breath and braless because my husband forgot to mention he was scheduled to come. Dirty dishes and piles of laundry. But, it’s fine, Tom doesn’t mind. I ask him about his mother’s health, his new granddaughter, if he had a nice holiday. He always asks, “How’s the little guy?”

When I welcome him in the front door, we swap pleasantries, catch up on life, and then he says, “Ok, well let me slip on my booties and do my thing!” He slips on those hairnet stockings over his work boots and scoots around, investigating and methodically spraying every crevice of our home.

Maybe I should feel grateful today that he paid us a visit, despite my scrambling to make myself and our house semi-presentable. It got me thinking about the job of a pest-control man, how intimate it is. Similar to a house cleaner who literally enters into your messy home and examines all of your filth; however, you can tell a house cleaner to skip a room if it’s in an exceptionally high state of dysfunction. The Orkin man doesn’t skip rooms. He follows the mess. In fact, he crawls into your attic and garage and the deep dark corners of your basement.

People say this to me (often) when they find out I’m a writer: “Oh, I’ve always wanted to write a book about my life! Someday…”

And then they never get started because it feels too daunting to sit down and write out your life story from A-Z. Here’s some good news for you: no one actually wants to read your life story from A-Z. Even if we read a memoir about a celebrity or a former president, all of the chapters are pointing us towards what happened that led them to the public eye. What did they do that brought them such success?

Come with me. Let me be your Orkin man and show you how to write your story. These are the exact methods I used to write my story, which will be published on Tuesday, March 11, 2025!