Friday, September 27, 2013

It's All About Priorities....

You may find this hard to believe, but there are actually people who enjoy housework. I am not one of those people. This fact is usually evident at any given time in our house.

Oh it's not filthy or anything... we DO keep it relatively sanitary... but clutter and dust bunnies tend to pile up. This is due, in part, to the fact that our house was built in 1955, and we have exactly four and half closets if you include the unfinished closet in the add-on bathroom in the den that used to part of a garage. And in 1955, closets were small. I don't know where people kept their junk in 1955... I'm guessing they just didn't accumulate as much stuff as folks do now. And I'll be the first to admit, I have way too much stuff.

I've been intending to "spring clean" for approximately two and half years now. The Love Shack definitely needs to be purged of excess ephemera. When I became a freelancer in late February of this year, I thought to myself, "Great.... I'll finally have time to do that spring cleaning I've been meaning to get around to, and maybe get my office set up." Well, it's almost October now (how the hell did THAT happen?), and the big spring cleaning still hasn't been done. Which is good and bad.

It's good, because I've honestly been to busy to get to it. Thanks to a wonderfully steady flow of work, I haven't had much time to do anything else. (I love my clients!!) My office is still just my Mac set up on my old drawing table in the spare bedroom, with an old office chair and a plastic file box from the Container Store. It is NOT ideal, but so far has served its purpose adequately.

It's bad, because I've honestly been too busy to get to it. I really haven't had much downtime since February. I'm not complaining... I'm grateful for the work, and my modus operandi is that work comes first. (It gets the bills paid, yo!) But that work ethic means that housework takes a back seat. Therefore, our little abode gets mighty cluttered, y'all! And that clutter starts driving me crazy after a while. (The steady and sometimes crazy work flow is also the reason this blog hasn't had a new post since July. I'm still trying to balance my time, and often failing miserably!)

Don't get me wrong... I've managed to make time to hang out at the beach or have lunch with pals occasionally, but that usually means I'll be working very late the day before or the day after to catch up. One recent Sunday, I actually declined an invitation to join some pals at a movie in order to get some freelance work done AND some housework done. These are the choices a worker bee like me has to make every now and then... go have fun, or engage in some intense domestic chores. As previously stated, I'm not a fan of domestic chores, but sometimes a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

And so I skipped the movie and resigned myself to the task at hand... a good scrubdown of the common areas of the Love Shack. I saved the bathroom for last. I don't mind cleaning the kitchen. That gets done regularly, although the deep-cleaning kitchen chores like mopping floors and re-organizing the plasticware cabinet happen only periodically, as it did that Sunday. And though the clutter of mail and other stuff often obliterates table surfaces, I don't mind so much tidying that up when it gets out of control. Dusting is not my strong suit either, but I can deal with it.

But cleaning the bathroom... I hate every single thing about cleaning the bathroom (aside from the end result). Maybe it's just me, but I absolutely hate the smell of the tub cleaner mingled with soap residue. I hate wiping other people's pee (yes, you, Mr. Remarkable Monkey) off the toilet seat (though thankfully he has good aim so that's not much of an issue). I hate long hairs getting tangled in the sponge and wrapped around my fingers, even though I know it's my own stupid hair. I hate trying to scrub down the shower curtain. And the smell of the mildew remover makes me absolutely nauseous. But I DO love a clean bathroom. So I took one for the team. And that bathroom sparkled!

I'm still hoping to find time to do that spring cleaning and purging before the end of the year... my mom is coming to visit in November, so that could be a good motivator. And with summer over and one of my beach pals enrolled in college, maybe I'll have fewer distractions in the coming cooler moths. We'll see. I might even find time to post an entry every now and then. Hmmmmm.....

1 comment:

  1. Totally feel you on this subject of cleaning. I usually wait until it has to be done too. Though, I have compulsive cleaners in my family so before they come over, I always have to do something to avoid a comment about dust coming up in conversation.

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