clean up after myself

It’s surprisingly easy to clean up after myself usually. As stupid as it sounds, I never quite realized how simple it was. It rarely takes more than 15 minutes a day, and everything just goes so much smoother when things are clean.

An important thing for me is to just concentrate on my own mess and not worry about anyone elses. If I’m having a slow day I might do more strenuous chores, but when I’m busy I just let myself worry solely about my own mess.

Right now I’m doing half an hour of cleaning every day- 15 minutes in my room and 15 minutes elsewhere in the house. I’m hoping that eventually I will just get to the point where I just need to do a few minutes of clean up a day, and then I can just start cleaning up after myself.

I’ve actually been doing pretty well at this. When we had our first child, our husband fell into the unspoken arrangement of him doing all the cooking and cleaning and me doing all the child-care duties like diapers, laundry and baths.

I know, it’s a situation many women would be jealous of. But as he’s been moving toward becoming more involved in parenting chores, I hadn’t become more involved w/ cleaning chores. I was more part of the problem than the solution as I never did the dishes, and always left shoes, purses, clothes and papers lying about everywhere.

So I’ve been doing the dishes when I get the chance – about two or three times a week. Taking out the trash on trash days, and putting my things away. This was actually the hard part. What made it easier was to change clothes as soon as I got home. So I take all of it off and put it away as I do it, rather than taking it off as it bugs me and leaving it wherever I am. This has been especially helpful with jewelry, which until now has been strewn all over the house.

I never actually realized this until I married a neatnick. It’s actually one of our top two points of contention. (My massive debt is the other – don’t I sound like a catch!)

My husband’s not home. He’s playing golf with his brother in Princeton. I will go out to meet them…in about an hour or so I’ll leave the house to get to a 4:54 train out of Penn Station.
I know he would really enjoy coming home to a nice clean apartment…so I’m going to do my best to get that done for him in the next 40 minutes…while getting ready to leave for an overnighter…
:-)

I am sad to say that I’m a slob… I leave a trail of a mess behind me. And I did it again this weekend… it seems like I have to think about this one every moment of everything I do all day every day… Ughh… not sure how to tackle this one.

I live alone, so the only person who really “suffers” when the clutter accumulates is me. I’ve always told myself that it doesn’t bother me. So why bother?

It does bother me, really. Saying it didn’t was a rebellious stance, and one that saved me from the discomfort of changing. I definitely feel better when my space is clean. I also figure that this will be a good habit to have in place if/when I’m living with someone else.

I do have “cleaning day” on one of the weekend days, but because I typically leave things laying around during the week - clothes, dishes, even food - cleaning day becomes this massive, intimidating, several hours of activity, after which it all feels great. Then it’s only a matter of a day before it looks cluttery again.

Committment: I’m setting reminders for this week, and will make a sincere effort to clean up the clutter I make in no more than 1 hour after I’m done with whatever activity created it.

I tidied today! It looked so nice in here. But once again, it is a mess.

I really want to learn to clean up after myself :(

~g.c.

I need to make my bed, fold the laundry, tidy the living room, do my lunch dishes, get my notes ready for class, organize my templates for class – all of these little unfinished tasks, they are each nagging at me. Start something, finish it. Get out of bed, and take 10 seconds to make my bed!