The Great Clean Fail

I grew up in a hoarding household. There was a path from the front door to the couch and to the beds and that was about it. The house was pretty much stacked from top to bottom with junk everywhere else. It was even hard to use the kitchen, what with outdated canned goods and empty soda bottles on every horizontal surface.

So, as an adult, I overcompensate. I throw away pieces of paper we later need on a regular basis. I freak out if a grocery bag is not emptied immediately upon its arrival inside the house. I very strictly keep my wardrobe to one in, one out.  Everything brought into the house has a place to be stored. If there's no home for something, it can't come in.

I like our house to be clean. I don't mind if there are books or magazines out on the tables or if the blanket is thrown willy nilly over the couch, but I really can't stand filth. Or things on the floor. I once read somewhere that the floor is no place to store things and it changed my entire worldview.

Which brings me to an early sneak peek at how I'm doing one of  my 2018 goals, specifically the goal of cleaning for 10 minute a day.  I bet I've only accomplished this goal a handful of times and it will look like I'm failing this goal. But, no, I'm not. I just want the house to be clean if someone decides to stop by unannounced*.  And it is incredibly unlikely that I would ever let the house get bad enough that I would feel shame in someone seeing it.  Here's why. I have rules for keeping the house in okayish shape.

1.  Leave the room cleaner than when you came in.  This is my number one rule of keeping the house looking nice.  If I use the bathroom, I also wipe down the sink. If I go to change Zelda's water, I also pick up the lint on the floor.  It doesn't matter how small the thing is that you do to make the room better, these little things add up.

2. If it takes less than a minute to do a chore, just do it.  I don't necessarily want to empty all the dishes out of the drainer, but guess what?  It takes less than a minute. Just do it.  I don't want to wipe down the kitchen counters** for the fifth time today, but guess what? Less than a minute.

3)  Don't be lazy.  If there's visible cat fur on the rug, get out the vacuum and clean it. It doesn't take ten minutes, but I vacuum almost every other day. Because it doesn't take long.  My innate, I grew up in a hoarder home tendency is to let things be. My own personal mantra is "don't be lazy" and I must say it a couple of dozen times a day to myself.

4) Declutter before bed. The house needs to look nice before we go to bed. The kitchen is sparkling, the bathroom ready for whatever whirlwind is going to hit in the morning, and everything is in its proper place. This is crucial for everyone's sanity.

Yes, there's dust and books everywhere, but it's not terrible, right?

It helps that there are only two of us and my husband is naturally tidy, if not clean. I don't know that he's ever cleaned a mirror, toilet, or tile floor in our marriage, but when he sees me digging in for a big clean, he Swiffers and dusts with the best of them. We don't have kids or the clutter that comes with them, but we do have a cat and she brings her own special brand of cleaning challenges***.  Anyway, I don't clean for ten minutes a day straight on most days, but I definitely spend more than ten minutes a day cleaning in various smaller ways.

I don't actually know why I'm writing this. I'm guess I'm already justifying how I've failed one of my quarterly goals by telling you that I don't think it's an important goal, but I must have thought it was important when I created these goals in December.  I don't know.  Just tell me I'm not alone in my overwhelming desire for a clean house with an overwhelming desire to do that in small bursts rather than giant long bursts of cleaning. 

We need a rug****, but otherwise it looks okayish, right?

*This has never once happened since we've been here unless you count the time the guy came to fix the house humidifier once without calling ahead of time.

**The counters are a dark laminate and EVERY speck of a crumb or WHATEVER ends up on those counters.  Heavy sigh.

***Kitty litter EVERYWHERE. I vacuum the bathroom almost every day. Seriously. How does she get so much of it in every crevice of the tile? 

****Ted's parents' friends offered us free rugs. They keep telling us the rugs are coming and I keep putting off buying a rug, but I'm at the end of my rope with the need for a rug in this room.  Soon.