clean up my house and keep it clean

I don’t often do sessions at my home but for some types of work it doesn’t seem right to do it at the office; I do multiple types of bodywork, some of which have more to do with spirituality than physical healing, and I actually choose my living spaces so that they can double as “temples” for special sessions. Anyway, I had to clean for tomorrow’s session…took pretty much every spare moment of the last week. At least it looks like a house rather than a lair now. lol. No, actually it looks pretty good. I find myself wishing I had maybe one more small closet; if I had that much more space there would actually be room for all my current stuff here, but this place is by far the best I’ve ever lived in – no major complaints, even the size works reasonably well. The problem I’m having is that cleaning regularly, even when I try to break it into small, manageable tasks for each day, is just too much to do. I suppose if I’m truthful with myself it’s a matter of priorities. I want a clean house very much but there are things I value more.

My top five essential daily tasks – prayer, meditation, practicing music, studying, and working/managing money without excess drama or stress – are actually more than enough to keep me busy 24 hours a day, and if I do them I see changes in my life. Frankly I’m not willing to take time away from any of those processes in order to clean the house, which doesn’t really improve things over time. If I knock myself out and spend 12 hours out of the week cleaning I can keep the place looking good…but there’s no evolution there; there’s no growth, no change, no improvement. The most I can do is maintain, and maintaining takes more time than it’s really worth. Not sure what to do about this.

You know, I’ve been struggling with mile-high stress over various topics for about 3 weeks now and it’s activating the symptomatology of my health condition. I can barely keep from making a bigger mess; cleaning up the existing one is nearly an impossibility. Not only that but the bookkeeping work is taking up most of the living room floor right now. (Don’t ask me how one man generates a pile of receipts this big and unruly in one year; once I have a stronger rapport with the client I actually might ask but for now it’s a big messy mystery.) So even if I could manage to clean everything else, I’d still really have no room in the house, so whatever extra boost that source of motivation would otherwise give me isn’t there.

This just isn’t happening to the degree I want. It seems like no matter what kind of effort I put in, messes happen faster than I can clean them up.

http://www.weebls-stuff.com/wab/housework/

...owing to the fact that I now HAVE to have this place in order by Wednesday. I won’t bother explaining why, it’d just stress me and bore you, but I’ve got to pull this place together by then. Good grief, where to even start?

Dishes. I need to do dishes. I’ll start there.

I might just post a lot of dizzy li’l micro-entries today, or keep editing this one, just so I don’t feel like I’m working at this alone. Hope nobody minds me posting some visual clutter in the course of getting rid of my physical clutter.

And I still can’t find a stupid pair of pants when I want them. (After searching for an hour I finally found them – in one of those “special places where I’ll have no chance to lose them because they’re right in front of me.”)

Sometimes I wonder if there’s any point at all.

I’m sure you’re aware that I have been trying very hard for the last several months to keep this house clean for myself, my guests, and yes, you. Your conduct this morning did not help.

I don’t mind when you leave bits of food splattered all over your eating area; you’re a messy eater, I know that, and that’s why you have a place mat. Neither do I mind when you go careening out of your litter box and kicking litter all over the bathroom floor; for whatever reason, male cats in particular seem to find pooping an occasion to celebrate, and if that means rocketing yourself out of there like you’re on fire, lovely. That’s why I keep a whisk broom next to your box. Nevertheless, this morning was a bit much.

First you tore my shelf off the wall. I don’t know how you managed to tear all five screws out of the wall, but somehow you did. My mother says I should just forget about it and be grateful nothing broke. My mother, as usual, missed the point. You are a CAT, and you somehow tore an entire SHELF off of the WALL!

You did this while I was asleep, and I was so exhausted I didn’t much care what the thunderous crash was – I only knew that your feet were galloping away from the scene, and that I’d likely have one heckuva cleanup job waiting for me when I finally got up. Then a short time later I heard you throwing up in the bathroom. Okay, cats throw up. They don’t like it any better than I do. Not your fault. And heck, you even threw up on a non-carpeted surface, which is pretty skillful.

Then when I woke up I discovered the true nature of the damage. Stuff EVERYWHERE. The vase of flowers you knocked over soaked several things on the way down, including a very sweet note from one of my best friends. When I went into the bathroom I discovered that you also had elected to sample the flowers from said vase at some point; I know this because that’s what you threw up. The flowers have been here a week and a half and you hadn’t shown the least interest. I’ve had flowers here regularly since I adopted you four years ago and you’ve never shown any interest in any of them, including flowers of this exact same variety. I might also add that you weigh about 15 pounds, so you can’t really make the excuse that you were starving and desperate, so…WHY??? And to top it all off, you caused another small avalanche in the bathroom that I had to dig through just to get to the toilet and pee.

If my screaming fits this morning disturbed you, my apologies, but well…let this be some indication that when I tell you repeatedly to stay away from the area near my desk, this is why it’s a good idea to LISTEN! I love you dearly but you drove me even nearer the precipice above utter insanity, and I was already doing the cha-cha pretty close to the edge of it with all that’s happening. It has been a LOUSY day for both of us ever since; I’ve been depressed and overwhelmed, so much so that I stayed home all day, and I’m not fun for you when you have to share the house with me that way. So, a humble request:

No more kittycat demolition games! Please! Or if you’re going to do something half this obnoxious, at least wait until I’m awake so I don’t open my eyes to this kind of chaos first thing.

Luv,

The Human

And today, as part of Sunday’s usual boogie, I have…

cleaned the cat box

cleaned up after the cat in other various ways (boy is he a messy little eater – only cat I know that needs a place mat!)

taken out the trash and recycling

cleaned the windows

washed the dishes and the kitchen floor

washed the bathroom sink, the bathtub, the shower curtain, the toilet, and the bathroom mirror

dusted

I’m finding it somewhat easier to keep up with some things just because I keep cleaning the house over and over for guests – someone or other almost every weekend now – and once it’s that nice I don’t want to mess it up. Putting stuff in my daily planner also helps; I’ve come to realize nothing gets done unless it’s in there.

There are areas where things could still improve though…

Booster projects:

-clean the table so I can work/eat on it comfortably

Continual:

-whatever I take out to use, put back where I found it as soon as I’m done with it, yes, even if I’m inspired or in a hurry to do something else

-wipe down surfaces as soon as I’m done with them

Daily:

-spruce up kitty’s eating area

-scoop litter

-sweep kitty litter off floor

Sunday-Tuesday-Thursday:

-take out trash in the bathroom and drag all the trash out to the roadside

-clean bath tub and mat

Monday-Wednesday-Friday:

-put cat toys into cat toy basket so the place doesn’t look like a danged cat sanctuary

-vacuum

Sunday:

-change kitty litter completely

-clean the windows

-wash/clean sink, toilet, bathtub, bathroom mirror

Monday:

-dust bathroom knickknacks

Tuesday:

-clean kitchen floor

Wednesday:

-just kinda dust everything

Thursday:

-change the sheets

Friday:

-straighten up stuff along the kitchen wall

Saturday:

-straighten up CDs, tapes, DVDs, and books which I KNOW will otherwise tend to become strewn all over the house

Monthly:

-check dates on emergency supplies and other non-refrigerated food

I can literally spend twelve hours a week cleaning and organizing a one-room cabin and I get to wondering if it matters at all because it seems like as soon as I start doing anything but cleaning – you know, like living – the place starts deteriorating and within two or three days the place looks like a nightmare again. I’m serious – I took out the trash two days ago and now there’s this huge pile of garbage again. The bed had nothing on it this morning but my alarm clock and now I’m probably going to have to get through a fifteen-minute cleanup to have anywhere to sleep. Two days ago the kitchen was immaculate and now it looks like a cyclone hit. Last week the table looked fine; now I can’t even see the stupid table. Two weeks ago the closet was in perfect order, now there’s a monstrous pile of linens and stuff on top of the drawers. I am ONE PERSON living alone! How is this kind of craziness happening?

And these schedules I set up for myself to keep up with it all worked okay for a while, but you know what? I am sick of everything in my life being determined by a list somewhere. That’s why I no longer look at my cleaning schedule, my daily routine that I wrote for myself, or my planner any more so than I must to get to appointments and get homework turned in on time. I barely feel like I’m the same person internally from one week to the next; I can’t deal with this repetitive Sisyphean insanity of doing the same incredibly time-consuming routines over and over only to have the problems repeat themselves weeks, days, or hours later. I don’t know what I need to do but this is not working.