This is me, throughout my entire life, with every single thing I don’t want to do: “It’ll be easier to do it when X happens.” It’ll be easier to eat well when I’m pregnant, because then I’ll be motivated. It’ll be easier after the baby is born, because I won’t feel so sick and unhappy and be so bothered by smells/tastes. It’ll be easier when I stop nursing so I’ll be less rabidly hungry and can also work on losing weight. It’ll be easier when I’m pregnant again because then I’ll be motivated.
It’ll be easier to trim those shrubs when it’s spring and I know the town will be sending around a truck to pick up debris. It’ll be easier when it’s summer and I can see how the shrubs have grown, and the kids will be home so it won’t be so pleasant to be inside. It’ll be easier in the fall when it’s not so hot and there aren’t so many bugs. It’ll be easier in the spring when these aren’t so LEAFY.
Future Me is so WITH-IT and WILLING! Future Me has a can-do attitude! Future Me is sensible and has self-discipline! When in fact I have always been Regular Me: my room has always been a mess, I’ve always had enough willpower to overcome any diet/exercise plan, and I don’t care about yardwork except insofar as the neighbors care. If a genie were to magic me into a slim, well-exercised body; a clean, well-organized, sparingly-possessioned house; and a tidy, well-landscaped yard, it would all be back to regular before it was time to fill out his one-year follow-up paperwork. I would like to HAVE all these things, but I don’t want to spend the time OR the effort to MAINTAIN them.
Periodically I get into some new plan that is going to help me to do the maintenance as well as the frenzied work, but it doesn’t work because there is a major issue at the heart of things: I don’t want to. It’s not worth it to me. I’ve seen how much effort and time it takes to keep the house clean, and I’m not interested. Of course I’d rather have a clean house! ANYONE would rather have a clean house, that’s like asking, “But wouldn’t you rather drive a Mercedes?” The issue is COST: how much time and work it takes to keep it that way. I can see why it is worth it to other people, because I have other things I spend time on that are worth it to me but not worth it to other people.
This leaves me a bit up a creek, however, when suddenly it IS worth it to me. For example, when houseguests are expected. Our house is a comfortable enough nest for me, but it gets much less comfortable when I imagine it through someone else’s eyes. But, think of the astonishing number of hours it would take to get it clean! And then, I KNOW I’m not going to maintain it, no matter how many decades I’ve spent thinking “I WOULD do it if only it STARTED clean.” So then it is both WORTH IT and NOT WORTH IT, at the same time, and that is hard to cope with, motivation-wise. I become driven only by stress and resentment and fear, and that is not a pleasant way to feel.
I imagine there are a lot of people who say “Piff! Who cares what they think? They can take it or leave it!” This is not a familiar mindset to me. I DO care what they think. To mention psychotherapy for the second time in a week, no amount of “SHOULDN’T care” and “WHY care?” and “DON’T care!” and “Here, take this pill that will help you care less” helped that go away. Some things, I believe, are temperament: just as I’m not someone who feels restless and unhappy in a messy house, I’m someone who cares how other people feel about that same house.
I can ADJUST the caring a bit, however. I can talk myself through it. I can remind myself that I don’t notice the little dusty corners of other people’s spice racks; I can remind myself that I feel nothing but relief when I go to someone else’s house and it’s messy; I can remind myself that people don’t really DEEP-DOWN care very much about my house, even if they DO feel critical and sniffy about it, which many people don’t. But I was thoroughly trained as a child that if you don’t take every single item off every single shelf every single week, it’s NOT CLEAN; and although that training hasn’t made a difference to my everyday life, it turns out to be hardwired when the panic sets in. And then there I am, red-faced, heart pounding, ready to snap the head off of anyone who talks to me or needs anything from me, scrubbing the inside of the cabinet under the sink while piles of books and papers are covering the dining room table, and jackets and mittens are covering the area right inside the door. PRIORITIES, Swistle. PRIORITIES. This is not the time to anger-clean your sock drawer.
Another issue is that I am SO BORED of cleaning this house. SO BORED. Thinking of cleaning that dining room AGAIN makes me want to lock the door behind me and rent someone else’s house for the week. This is when my mind always turns to having someone else do it: if someone is going to have to do something so boring and unpleasant, shouldn’t it be someone who can get PAID for it? But clutter is a bigger issue than cleanliness. And getting someone in here to clean is a bigger wasp nest of anxiety issues than doing it myself, so. “Can’t you just put on some music while you do it?,” says the memory of the psychologist. Er. Do we have different definitions of boredom, or is it that we are affected by music to different degrees? “What’s the big deal, Sisyphus? Just put on some music! That always makes ME feel energized and motivated!”
Well. I am writing this because I need to get started, and I don’t want to. I will feel somewhat better when I DO get started—until everyone comes home and starts to mess up the work I’ve done, at which point I will feel much worse. But I still need to get started.
You are truly one of a kind. I LOVE your posts.
this describes me so completely (along with Hyperbole and a Half’s ‘Why I’ll never be an Adult’) that I am blushing at my seat right now.
Yes, 100 percent yes!! This is me too…you are not alone!
Can you save enough time between done cleaning (for the day) and kids coming home to TREAT YO’SELF? I say this is the only way to power through the woefully crappy task. I believe in you!
Swistle, I hear you. I cannot keep my apartment cleanliness maintained during the school year to save my life. However, as I wade through cat hair dust bunnies, shoes, paperwork, and clothes (it’s really not that bad, I promise, but it FEELS LIKE IT), I do get that itchy “Goodness, I’m a grown woman, WTAF, your home is a mess, self?” I think I need to hop back on the Unf*** Your Habitat train. The best part of UFYH is they have a LARGE emphasis on doing WHAT YOU CAN with the SITUATION YOU ARE IN. Like, if you have a chronic illness or anxiety or a broken ankle, make adjustments WITHOUT GUILT OR SHAME. They suggest 20/10s, 20 minutes work and 10 minutes rest/play. For some people 5 minutes work and 30 minutes rest might be the right combo! Of course, guilt and shame seem to be hard wired in me, but it is really a lovely thought anyway.
I am currently reading this post when I should be getting ready to paint the spare bathroom. It’s needs it so much and I want it done but it sounds like a better project for tomorrow. All of which is to say, you are not alone.
Anger-clean is my new favorite phrase! That’s pretty much how I clean every single time. I turn on every last one of my family members for being such miserable slobs who just don’t care about me. It’s real.
Bored with cleaning!! Yes. So bored. That is genius.
Also, FWIW–I have a weekly house cleaner & it is magical bc a) she cleans for me and b) it FORCES me to pick up the clutter. It is so, so worth it & would be the very last thing I let go in any household budget cuts.
This is what I was going to say. I am always picking up the clutter (and grouching at my slovenly children) at the last minute on Thursday night and Friday morning, but when I come home on Friday night and the cleaners have made everything shiny, I am very happy. I would tighten a lot of other belts before I let this one go.
Love this post!
This is likely one of those: works for me but doesn’t mean it works for you comments. But somehow that’s not stopping me. For dull tasks that I have to do I’ve been enjoying audiobooks. Downloaded from library so free. I need grnerally either humorous nonfiction (think Tina Fey, Mindy Kaling or Jim Gaffigan) or very fluffy fiction. I know you love books so I thought it was at least worth mentioning.
I’m glad you posted this.
I love audiobooks for cleaning the house, yard work, and working out. I also get them from the library and download onto my iPod or just play them from my computer.
It definitely helps me do things I don’t want to do (especially if it’s a really good book) because I tell myself I can only listen if I’m doing something in that category of chores (as opposed to listening while driving or taking a bath, etc)
Yes! I started doing that for my workouts. I can only listen to my book when I am at the gym on the exercise bike. It helped in the summer when I could find time to work out, but now that school has started (I’m a teacher), it’s not as helpful because it’s so hard to find time to go to the gym.
I agree with audiobooks – they power me through many a workout. What I find even more deeply rewarding for cleaning, though, is the Savage LoveCast. It’s super-cheeky and a often bit inappropriate and somehow that makes the cleaning SO MUCH BETTER, because it mitigates the “mom to many kids, cleaning the house” banality of the whole thing. I might be scouring food off the floor and triaging masses of laundry, but at least it’s all countercultural and EDGY because I am listening to someone discuss threesome etiquette while I am doing so.
Yes! Swistle, I loved this post, and feel like you are describing my life. And I am shocked by all the other people who are saying the same thing! I thought I was the only one! Doesn’t the rest of the world happily/effortlessly keep their house clean? I mean, every time I go to someone else’s house, it is spotless!
Anyway, I was going to say the same thing as Eva up there. Music does not help me one bit. But I find that if I listen to something that keeps my brain engaged, it makes me more likely to be willing to clean. So I use audiobooks, or podcasts or NPR. Sometimes, if I know that there’s a new episode of a favorite podcast it even makes me want to clean! It’s amazing!
Alexander McCall Smith’s Isabel Dalhousie series…during pressure-cooking lunch and doing dishes. It worked! No rage!!! Amazing. I can’t believe I hadn’t tried this earlier. Thanks!
You are not alone! DH and I have been working furiously on our house for the last few weeks in preparation for when my relatives visit. They’re coming in from out of state for my baby shower the weekend after this, which makes me feel quite urgently that I ought not embarrass myself (and my mom, by extension, for some reason, even though she doesn’t live with me) by having a messy house.
It is taking us MULTIPLE WEEKS AND WEEKENDS to get the house in order. There are lots of excuses why it was in such bad shape: I was nonfunctional for the first trimester and everything went to crap; we are in the process of clearing out an entire bedroom for the baby, which means we are also making room in other areas of the house for everything that WAS in that room; we have too much stuff so we’re getting rid of some but it means we need to sort through Everything which means Everything came out of Where It Goes… ugh.
I keep thinking “Once it is clean, it will be very easy to keep it that way.”
“Once it is clean, I will never have to work this hard at it again, because I will keep up with it.”
“Once I put everything away, it will have a place to go and won’t clutter the kitchen table and all other surfaces.”
But who am I kidding… I don’t clean unless people are coming over. And adding a baby to the mix is just going to make it worse. I keep hoping that something will magically switch in my brain when I become a mother, and suddenly I’ll be good at keeping house “for the sake of the baby”. I’m not holding my breath, though.
Anyway, I tell you all of this because you have made me feel Not Alone, and I want you to feel Not Alone also.
I have decided that I can only care about the cleanliness of some things. So the master bedroom and bathroom are in pretty good shape, and the dining room, and the front hall closet. The living room, the front hall itself, the kitchen counter corner of doom? I will get to them when the kids are all out of the house. And possibly my spouse.
I used keep my house clean enough. Sometimes it was messy, sometimes it was not. But for the life of me I cannot get it together this school year. I added another day at work, but the kids are all in school so that shouldn’t matter, right? I remember thinking when my kids were all tiny that when they were all in school that I would have SO MUCH TIME to get stuff done. I often wondered why some women whose kids were all in school didn’t have jobs. What on earth did they do with all of that time??? Oh. Now I know. They cleaned and did normal house stuff because no one told me when they all come home (I have 4) that you never stop for one second. Dinner, laundry, cleaning, making sure everyone goes to scouts, and church, and piano lessons, and backpacks are checked, folders signed, homework is done…It never ends. I seriously had no idea. And my kids are only in grade school. You have one more kid than I do. The fact that you are sitting upright and writing this post makes you some sort of super woman.
Oh Swistle, this is exactly how I feel, EXACTLY! Right down to the ingrained training that you have to move Every Single Thing and clean UNDER it for something to be truly clean! Right down to the anxiety of having Someone Else come into MY House and clean! (Although I DO have someone come in and clean, and she is… not good. She did not get the Move Every Single Thing memo, nor even the “if there are smudges on the fridge, cleaning them is part of the entire bit of Cleaning the House” memo. But the anxiety of having to fire her, and find someone else, or of going BACK to not having a house with vacuum lines on the floors once every other week, are much stronger than the What Exactly Are We Paying For anxiety.)
For what it’s worth, my mother – of the Move Every Single Thing variety – says that the most important things are toilets and surface cleaning. No one will notice if you vacuumed or if you scrubbed the faces of the cupboards or if you straightened the fridge. And even though it makes me panicky NOT to do those things, it at least helps give me a starting point. I can straighten the fridge if I have time, but it’s not a PRIORITY. (Sock drawer.)
Good luck!
I think even Martha Stewart has said something about bathrooms being the priority if you’re in a rush to clean for a party or something. Of course, bathrooms are my least favorite things to clean. But you might be able to find a cleaning person who would just do bathrooms, which (maybe?) have less clutter to deal with before you can do the scrubbing part!
Clearing surfaces are so the best for reward to effort ratio, in my opinion. And getting good smelling surface spray (they have radish Mrs. Meyer’s at Target now, at least down here in Georgia, which is ridiculously prettier smelling than it sounds) gives a little reward-y feeling to being able to wipe off the counters, or coffee table, or dining table.
Better reward though, laying on the sofa and reading twitter for like an hour after you clean a surface.
So this morning I was thinking about this training that you have to pick up every single thing (even in cupboards) and clean under it before it’s really clean. And it reminded me of a radio program I heard a little while ago, where I learned that there’s a culture where they exhume their dead each year and dust them off and display them ritually for a little while, and then rebury them for next year, which instantly made me think of my beloved great-grandmother, who would take out her unused Best China and her coffee urn and whatnot each spring, and clean them, and then put them away again, swathed in plastic.
I guess I would say: that’s a culture, and I respect it, but it’s not my culture. I don’t exhume my dead, and I don’t wash china that’s already clean. It’s like you write about on the baby names site, Swistle. When we start a new family, we get to pick our own culture, maybe including cleaning culture.
I honest to goodness thought that once I was at home full time, my house would be significantly cleaner. Really! I believed this! Then, I learned that having more time to clean does not translate to the desire to clean. Also: nursing. More time consuming than I remember.
I hate cleaning. Not all cleaning – I tackle the bathrooms very regularly and reliably, because I hate seeing a dirty bathroom far more than I hate cleaning it – but if I could never wash another dish in my life, I’d do it.
The best advice I think I’ve got (and bear in mind my house is currently far from clutter-free and clean) is:
– Enlist the children. If they contribute to the mess, they have to regularly and reliably contribute to cleaning the mess. I’ve given my kids more and more responsibility in this area as they’ve gotten older.
– Get the right tools. Turns out, if I wear rubber gloves I don’t mind the “wet and icky” part of cleaning as much, which is my big issue with things like dishes. Likewise, those wee duster things with handles make it much easier to clean blinds so it takes less time, plus I don’t have to *shudder* touch the dirt.
– Have places for things so that it’s easy for people to put stuff there. If the kids can’t reach the hangers in the closet, they couldn’t hang up their coats even they wanted to. This year I’m organizing the mudroom and installing hooks at the right height for kids’ jackets and snowpants, and baskets for wet mittens so that they’ll dry properly.
– Outsource if you can. I recently paid to have my windows cleaned, including screens and tracks, and I’m startled at the difference every time I look outside. It would have taken me a full day to do that job, so paying a professional to do it in a couple of hours was well worth it to me, plus they have the big ladders, etc. Also, making extra money to pay cleaners works for me: I hate cleaning, but I love going to the gym. So I teach a class at the gym a couple of times a week, and I can use that money to pay for someone to clean for me every couple of weeks. Win-win. This has fallen by the wayside since we moved at the beginning of the year because it’s such a pain to find a good cleaner and I haven’t even been able to get our boxes unpacked fully to clear rooms for actual cleaning, but I do believe it is time to start tackling that before winter sets in so we can have some semblance of a clean house for the holidays.
I know this is probably the exact opposite of helpful (sorry!), but locking the door behind me and renting somebody else’s house for the week sounds simply delightful!
When I got my first grown-up apartment, I decided I would keep it clean, and I did. Every Saturday I vacuumed and dusted and shuffled cobwebs out the door. It was lovely, and it proved I could do it, so I checked that off my bucket list and I’ve never done it again. Today my first-ever cleaning helper showed up at 8 a.m., and when I go home for lunch my house will be clean. I am ecstatic.
Oh, yeah. I hear you. Part of my problem is that we really don’t have room for all the “stuff” we have and yet I have a hard time getting rid of things that still have some use in them.
I play games with myself to make myself get started:
One of the most helpful ideas I’ve read for clutter cleanup is the “5 item rule” – you resolve to put away/throw away just 5 items from a cluttered surface. A lot of times, you end up seeing more than 5 things once you get started.
Sometimes, I decide to spend a certain amount of time on a single room (say, 15 or 20 minutes) or on each room (say, 10 minutes), and set a timer for that amount of time.
Then, I have a little treat. Unfortunately, if I treat myself with something like reading a chapter of a good book, it can turn into an all-afternoon treatfest before I know it.
Oh I’m totally with you Elizabeth. That whole work-for-20, break-for-10 would not work for me; the break would be my undoing. I’m more of the inertia type: a body at rest stays at rest, but a body in motion stays in motion.
Wow, I thought I was the only person who applied that to myself. Once I get going with cleaning or another chore, I’m good as long as I don’t stop or get interrupted. Once I give myself a rest, it’s all over.
Me too! Our place is always slightly cluttered and needs vacuuming and sweeping, and I think I’ve actually dusted exactly twice, when we moved the bookshelves. I tell myself that if we had more space it would be better, but I don’t know if that’s true.
I do find itemized lists to be helpful, at least in terms of prioritizing. Also, rewards. Like, “if I clean the kitchen, then I can fold laundry and watch the tv show I’m really into.”
Good luck!
I forgot about folding laundry while watching a favorite tv show. Putting clothes away is my least favorite chore, but I used to fold laundry while watching reruns of Murder She Wrote and I have such fond memories of it!
I somehow fell out of that habit. Maybe I ran out of Murder She Wrote episodes. I currently have two overflowing baskets of clean clothes. I’ll have to turn on the last season of How I Met Your Mother (just now on Netflix) and start folding.
:)
“What’s the big deal, Sisyphus? Just put on some music! That always makes ME feel energized and motivated!”
Such a fitting comparison. Made me smile.
What about paying for a one time house cleaning?
Also? Paying someone else to clean my house has changed my life. Every other week I have a sparkly clean house. It only stays sparkly for about four hours, but it keeps the baseline cleaner. The toilets/bathtub/stove/floors/etc never have enough time to get distressing to me. And they change all the sheets and make the beds, too.
I will never be motivated enough to clean my own house, but I am surely motivated enough to locate the dollars in my budget. If I had to cut my spending, I would cut MANY OTHER THINGS before I cut this service. Maybe I don’t need a smart phone or a gym membership after all. Because the house cleaners STAY.
I mean I know about the anxiety of having someone else in your house, but seriously about the paying someone to do it.
It works on two levels:
1. Anxiety of having people come to your house to clean makes you frantically put all coats/mittens/shoes/homework papers ACTUALLY AWAY, accomplishing decluttering aspect.
2. Actual live humans who get paid to clean houses come in and clean your house for you.
The anxiety is not pleasant, but it is short-lived.
You are just my favorite. That is all.
I’m the mother who hard-wired you to think every single thing must be moved each week, and I repent!!! I repent!! I repent!! Not only is that wrong, but I myself never do it anymore — or even anywhere close! And I laughed out loud at the comment about Future Me being so WITH-IT and WILLING! You’ve revealed to me exactly how I am about windows. I’ll so totally do them if and when we get the kind of windows that bend out. Well, now that we have them, and I certainly would, but it’s too hot — too cold — too early — too late — but Future Me not only will do it, she will ENJOY doing it. Exposed! AAAaaaaaaaaaaa!!!
Motherrrrrrrrrr! It’s kind of hard for a child to be RESENTFUL if the parent goes around EARNESTLY REPENTING.
Also, I was SO SURE I’d wash the fold-out kind of window. SO SURE. I thought it would be FUN, even! And yet here we are.
Once again, you eloquently express something I think about frequently.
I just DON’T WANT TO DO IT.
How do I make myself want to do it? Motivation seems like the wrong place to start. I WANT a clean house. Is that not motivation? It is the actual, physical, time-consuming DOING IT that I somehow cannot manage. It actually eats me up. I feel this way about a lot of things. Why can’t I just do it? WHY?!?! (Then I worry that I have the emotional and mental capability of a toddler and that I am truly never going to be an adult.)
Swistle! I could’ve written this verbatim. Every. Single. Word. I am literally the exact same way and have the exact same thought processes. Nice to know I’m not alone (in my messy house that only gets cleaned-cleaned for guests)! Ha.
See, this is me too. And it used to make me feel panicky, and vexed, and child-like. But, I’m trying to spin it more like I am an adult who can legitimately CHOOSE to do these things. Or, not. It’s not that I couldn’t do these things. I am capable, I’m just making different choices. And that is totally okay.
I might like myself more if I lost X amount of pounds, or finally stayed on top of the house work/projects, or planned dinners for the week instead of panicking at 5 every night. But, I wouldn’t like somebody else more, or less, because of these things.
Do I still care? Yes. Absolutely. But, a few degrees less.
I listen to podcasts while I clean, cook, take the kids for a carriage ride and this is how I can entice myself into unpleasant tasks. Setting a timer doesn’t really get me motivated b/c I would be too annoyed to stop in the middle of the task, so I do concrete goals instead—one whole room, one wall/section, one cluttered surface depending on what I can talk myself in to. I make my kids do a quick pick-up of just 10 things, and it doesn’t seem like muck, but it adds up, especially if you have lots of kids. For you that would be 50 things picked/put away/cleaned at a time!
Good luck. This was me last spring whuile getting ready for the big family April birthday party. All three of my kids have April birthdays! So neat! Such a pain in the house cleaning ass. I have to start cleaning in March and keep it clean til May. Past me is such an idiot.
HAHA YES. My kids’ birthdays are six weeks apart…not close enough for a shared party but close enough that we have to try to maintain Party Hosting Cleanliness for the six weeks in between. Every year I swear I won’t do it again and then the next year I get guilted into giving each child his own party again.
I read this while putting off cleaning my house. I have a house guest arriving tomorrow so I do feel obligated to do it. But like you, I have a standard of cleanliness for myself that is somewhere in the middle and that’s where I prefer to stay. When guests come, I do have to kick it up a notch, which makes me feel resentful and grumpy before they even get here! I usually put on straight from the garbage TV shows like Wives With Knives or something. For some reason that helps!
Signed, +1
I find it so much easier to clean other people’s stuff: Husband’s and Child’s socks are matched and folded while mine are dumped in the drawer. I *volunteered* to clean out an office at work this week. I used to tidy the kitchen when I babysat. I used to help classmates organize their desks/binders/lockers.
You speak my language, Swistle. There are some tricks that work to push me a little bit further into cleaning (I do the 5 tasks/long break approach), but right now I’m working on exercising my Fuck It muscles. I don’t actually live in squalor, and so I *know* that the reasons I get twitchy about people coming over are due to socialization.
I don’t think I’ll ever make it to the place of completely not caring that some folks (my partner) live in full-time, but I can get a bit closer. For me, it’s less about the specific things (even though I know people won’t care about clean cabinet fronts), and more about imagining how I feel when I go to other people’s houses. So long as the bathroom isn’t scary, the kitchen doesn’t look science-experiment-ey, and there are comfortable places for everyone to sit, I’m good. And so I push myself to believe that that’s how other people will feel, too.
I have been pondering a situation in my house. I am a fairly tidy person who married someone, and gave birth to his children, and they all have flat surface-itis. No flat surface can be allowed to remain clean and uncluttered. It’s like there’s magnets in there. If I clean off the dining room table, it’s buried again within hours, seriously.
But then, it stays that way. I have been conducting an experiment and have not cleaned it off. No new junk has been added to it, it’s the same exact junk that they rushed to put there when it was clean. How does that work, exactly? It drives me crazy.
Also, anger cleaning is my new favorite phrase. Thank you for this.
At my house we call the big counter that separates the kitchen from the living room “the crapmagnet”. For the exact reasons you outlined here.
I go through cycles from despair that I will ever get on top of the clutter to not caring to feeling like I’m finally getting a handle on it and back to despair. There are just so many jobs! And I also feel like a walking cliche in the way I want to complain about how all the jobs are just the same thing over and over and over and over and over again. Why even bother washing the floor? It will be disgusting ten minutes later. Ditto the bathroom. And decluttering the dining room table is POINTLESS because IT FILLS WITH CRAP IMMEDIATELY. Sigh.
I am fortunate in that I feel pretty comfortable with letting other people see my clutter. I have MOSTLY made peace with it. I know objectively that it is literally impossible to keep things clutter-free right, what with Ann Marie following me around carefully taking items from where they belong and just as carefully putting them where they do not belong – sometimes items that are currently in USE such as the whisk Andrew was using to make waffles and was not done using and which we found on the couch – so when I combine that with all of the jobs I still have to do for the children that essentially amount to living two lives – dressing them, hounding them to wash themselves, brushing teeth, etc etc etc – well there simply are not enough hours in the day to do all these things and also keep the house clutter free. There just aren’t! Not unless I throw everything away. And honestly, I throw a lot of stuff away.
Boy, did you hit the nail on the head for me-I am absolutely bored of cleaning house. I used to get all motivated, and clean, clean, clean-till things were sparkling, and I can’t remember the last time I did that. I clean grudgingly. But…one thing that helps me if I have to do a deeper clean? I drink champagne while I clean. It puts me in a good mood, and for some reason, it energizes me-must be the bubbles :)
For future you (and future me) there is a wonderful old Bert & Ernie where the roof leaks and Bert keeps insisting that Ernie should fix it. When it is raining, Ernie say, “Don’t be ridiculous, Bert, I can’t go up and work on the roof while it is raining!” And when it is not raining, Ernie says, “Why should I bother to fix the roof — it’s not leaking [now].” This is my housekeeping life in a nutshell and I try to embrace it. Mostly successfully.
I didn’t read the comments, so perhaps this has been suggested, but I could never get through cleaning (or at least not without considerably more resentment ) without audiobooks. For me at least, they make a big difference. Sometimes I even find myself looking forward to doing generally rage-inducing tasks (say, cleaning up the dinner wrecked kitchen in the evening while everyone else SLEEPS) just so I can continue the story in peace.
Oh dear god do I hear you on this.
I have three kids, and a husband, and a landlord. We have regular inspections every 3 months and I swear it’s only that, that keeps me motivated at all. My eldest is 14 and he is a big help, and he’s already reached the point of despair about various things. “Why did I sweep up under here when you were just going to eat here and leave crumbs all over the floor again 5 minutes later?” he wails at my 4 y.o.
At least someone understands.
We moved house 5 years ago. In the corner of our study, there are 2 moving crates that I have never unpacked. I kept meaning to do so, but never got around to it. Bonus- I don’t even notice them anymore! I have put other clutter on top of them, and I think they blend right in.
When people who don’t know me well come to our house and see the packing boxes, they ask whether we have recently moved in. I say yes!
(Hey, 2009 is recent, as far as I’m concerned).
This whole delightful post reminds me of this Cracked article (which is full of bad language but otherwise unobjectionable, I think):
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-youre-sabotaging-your-own-life-without-knowing-it/
My rule about people seeing my house is that I’ll clean for a planned visit, because I like it when things are clean, and it makes it more comfortable for everyone. But if someone stops by unannounced or with little notice, they can suck it up and deal with the mess. My mother was vastly relieved because she is mortified when anyone other than her children see her house messy and she didn’t want to pass that feeling on to me. It helps that my in laws are not remotely clean people, overall. My husband’s siblings actually make fun of him for liking things neat (and he’s hardly anal about it).
I have a friend who is extremely on top of it – one of those people who can focus on an unpleasant task for a really long time, and/or take a procrastination break that is 10 minutes long before diving back in. She gets things done ahead of time, rarely at the last minute. One thing I learned from her was the phrase “Future Me will thank Current Me.” I use that a lot. However … I find that Future Me, when freed up from whatever task I didn’t put off this time, somehow ends up having to fill the time with equally unpleasant tasks, perhaps ALSO in the service of Future Me, which makes me think Future Me is actually kind of an ungrateful jerk.
I wish there was a “like” button for comments! There are so many things being written I nod along with and make me think “yes!”
Have you seen the funny diagram thing of what a man’s brain is doing when he is trying to go to sleep and what a woman’s brain is doing? This is the exact illustration of this! I can just see all the ping pong balls flying around your brain on this subject!
As always, you have a way of making something seem so obvious that I never really considered before. I am exactly like this on many issues (specifically the shrubs!) And deep cleaning. The clutter drives me nuts enough to keep up with that (sort of) but I never, ever, ever get to the deep cleaning. And I just truly don’t care. I don’t care. As long as it looks picked up I believe it is clean. HAHA. But when certain friends come over I get all panicky because they are CLEAN freaks and I KNOW they will judge me. How ridiculous!!!!
The one thing I have found that works better than anything else is to listen to music WITH HEADPHONES. It can’t be on a radio or something because then I realize I hang around only in that room. If its in my headphones I really can tune out my adult onset ADD distractions and buckle down more easily. I hope that helps! Don’t sweat the small stuff! Just hit the major stuff. General clutter pickup and floor sweeping/mopping/vacumming and call it a day!
I was at the house of one of my kids’ friends and was contemplating the mom as a potential “mom friend”… and then she casually mentioned that she hated fingerprints on her stainless steel appliances and had resorted to mineral oil (?)* to clean them. I immediately wrote her off as someone I would ever want to have in my kitchen, which has fingerprints all over the stainless steel appliances.
*The question mark is because even struck with the new and horrible realization that fingerprints are somehow unacceptabe, I still couldn’t bring myself to care enough to commit how to eliminate them to memory. I know it was some sort of oil, but I’m a bit fuzzy as to whether I’m right about the type.
I’ve just resorted to giving the kids (ages 13, 11 & 8) cleaning tasks when they misbehave. Cleaning the toilet, straightening up the front closet, wiping down cabinets… all community service in my house. I recently made one kid (who is neat) clean up another kid’s room for community service. Messy kid wasn’t about to leave her stuff unsupervised, so that was a nice 2-for-1 bonus. We will also set the timer on the weekend and all work together for 30-45 minutes. I don’t feel as bored/put upon if everyone is putting in some effort.
I used to thoroughly Spring Clean my house, and I mean CLEAN. Not only pick-up-and-clean-under, but clean all the things that are being picked up, too. Wash the walls, curtains, comforters, blinds, dryer vent, refrigerator coils, vacuum the CEILING (Yes, really.). I would attach the edges of the stove with a toothbrush and take off all the knobs to soak them and clean under them. I was crazy.
It was incredibly satisfying. It’s not anymore. But boy, did I LOVE my house after that. But that took DAYS.
I mostly rage-clean and rage-organize. To podcasts.
I wish the audio book thing would work for me. I tried it with Netflix and dishes (also known as The Utter Bane of my Existence). The problem is, I am actually very aware that there are TWO choices: do dishes and watch Netflix, or just watch Netflix. I am no more able to motivate myself to “only watch while washing” than to wash in the first place.
HA! I am pretty sure the ONLY reason I have people over ever is to motivate myself to clean.
When it comes to housework, Quentin Crisp said it so well: “There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.” (but I bet nobody judged HIM by the state of his house).
However, my favourite part of this whole post is: “… I’ve always had enough willpower to overcome any diet/exercise plan…”. I really truly LOLd.