I carry in "my purse" a list of chores that need to get done in perpetuity. I wish I knew why I can't get a handle on it. Or won't. Yesterday, a friend of mine, in the same boat as me, learned she didn't get a job she was hoping for. Her response? She cleaned, vacuumed and polished her home. What a productive way to deal with frustration! I don' t know how I have been dealing with my frustration but this I can tell you - the dirt is piling up. My carpet looks like I raise farm animals indoors.
It used to be that on a fairly regular basis, I would wake up with cleaning on my mind. I would get up early, put on a pot of coffee, begin what would be several loads of laundry and, with a cup of joe in hand, I would go from room to room with my basket of cleaning supplies, mops and vacuum cleaner. I would go sweep through the house from one end to the other without stopping. I would do all this work, still in my pajamas until I got to the last room: my bathroom. After scrubbing it clean, I would lay out clean clothes on my clean bed in the clean master bedroom of my clean house and then jump in the shower. Once fresh and dressed, I would emerge - completely satisfied, happily admiring the vacuum tracks in the carpet (stepping gingerly so as not to disturb them so soon) and feeling that I had accomplished something wonderful. And then I would do whatever I damned well pleased. GREAT DAY!!!
But that was before I had to share a space with as many as 6 people at once and all their friends. Not one of my kids wakes with cleaning on their minds. They go kicking and screaming into the task every time and they don't do the job I would do. And if I invest my time in cleaning out a room, I need be absent from it for mere moments before a mess starts to happen - as if by magic. Black magic.
No one walks gingerly over the vacuum tracks. No one even notices them. No one else seems to feel the satisfaction of leaving a room exactly how they found it. I appear to be the only person who craves order - and I just don't get it. I cannot just "close the door" because I KNOW WHAT'S BEHIND IT! And then I start thinking about it, and then I have to open the door, and then my eyes start rolling back into my head. The girls' closets are the stuff of "Fibber McGee and Molly" scripts. (And if you don't know who they are, google it. Keep in mind of course, they were before my time, as well.)
For a while I had a cleaning lady. She came on Fridays and left before I came home from work. By the time I arrived I was supremely disappointed because crap was already accumulating everywhere - as if no one had ever heard of a drawer or a closet. I could barely see the tracks she had made on the carpet with the vacuum (and my cleaning lady made professional vacuum tracks) and I finally decided it was not worth the money. I could bitch for free.
I know that all this mess is here because life happens in my house and I am powerless to stop it. Not that I want to stop life, like breathing life, but I do wish I could destroy all evidence of it tearing through the front door. To be fair to myself and my family, most people I know who have a really clean home have less people inhabiting it and a housekeeper who comes twice a week.
In spite of the fact that I live in one, I am one of those people who can't make friends with a messy house. Seeing dust and dirt, smudges and pillows tossed askew on a chair, leave me feeling as though I am suffocating. So in general, I feel like I have chronic shortness of breath. And my house is one thing I thought I would get control of as an unemployed person. I was actually looking forward to it. Yet since getting the pink slip, the only thing I have accomplished is the cleaning out and organizing of two closets. As I write this, I am staring at a kitchen that is so filled with dirty dishes, clutter, and garbage that needs to be taken out that it would just be easier to move.
If only I could.
Damn.
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