keep my house clean

I have no idea how I ever expected to “keep” my house clean when I can’t even seem to GET it clean in the first place.

I’m feeling so overwhelmed by life lately, I need to remove the things that are impossible but still manage to stress me out. This is definitely one of them.

Due to an unexpected visit from friends, I did a whirlwind cleaning/tidying of the main floor (the upstairs is a DISASTER). It’s not as organised or thorough as I would have liked to do, if it weren’t a panic situation, meaning there are suddenly a lot of drawers crammed with stuff that doesn’t belong there, and like I said, the upstairs definitely bore the brunt of the downstairs cleaning – at least one pile in the bedroom goes up to my hips.

BUT, except for a corner of the office where we have some boxes that still need to be unpacked (yes, 2 years after moving in), the downstairs is pretty much entirely dust-, dirt-, and clutter-free.

Now let’s see how long it stays that way.

The lovely polite neighbour from next door just knocked on our door, asking if we could find a phone number for her. We invited her to step inside while we looked, and it was horrifying.

I’ve know the living room (entirely visible from the front door area) is a disaster lately, but standing in it with this lovely polite neighbour (whose house is likely immaculate) who was seeing it for the first time, I realised that it’s actually quite terrible.

Too much mess to describe, but for some reason the one that bothered me the most was looking at our nice new couch and loveseat – a total of 5 seat cushions. Shouldn’t more than two of those seat cushions be clear of crap, so some actualy sitting can occur?

Cripes. I’ve got errands to run, but when I get home, I’m attacking that living room. It’ll take a lot of self-control not to knock on the nice neighbour’s door and demand that she come over and see the living room after it’s cleaned, especially since it will probably only last a day or two, and by the next time she comes knocking it’ll be in the same disgusting state of disarray.

Okay, yesterday I planned to give up on this goal, and replace it with one about first getting the house organised. After all, how can I keep it clean if it’s never been clean in the first place?

But last night I tackled our tiny front entrance, and organised the closet there. Labelled shoe boxes, got rid of silly wire hangers that can’t hold coats anyway, etc. It felt great and while it’s still not as good as other people’s homes, it looks better than it’s ever looked.

So now instead of replacing this goal with organising, I’m going to keep both on the list, and each time I get a new area of the house organised, it’ll be added to this goal, meaning I have to KEEP it organised and tidy.

Right now all that’s involved in keeping the house clean is keeping a 4×4’ square of space clean. Let’s see how I do!

I don’t even know where to start. Before I can keep my house clean, I have to get it clean, and how in the world do I do that??

Today I picked up around the front entrance, and cleared off (almost) the top of a stand up dresser thingy we keep near the front door.

It made me feel good to get even that little bit done, but I know it’ll be messy again by tomorrow afternoon.

It satisfies my anal retentive tendencies to pick up stuff and put it away, but it really drives my perfectionist side insane when I can’t do it all properly, or fully, or make it last forever.