I bet most of you working parents can relate: You work full time outside of the house(or at home full time without the chance to really clean because you have to be doing work while home), have a kid (or a few) and a spouse or partner. Days off you want to spend with your family and don't want to clean. After a long day of work, you don't want to clean either. Before you know it, your house is cluttered and untidy. You try your best to pick things up, surface clean the "important areas," like the kitchen, living room and the bathroom people use when they come over and on the surface it looks great. But before you know it, you and your significant other look around and are arguing over the clutter and mess and who doesn't do what and who works more, etc.
Confession: I have never been an all-star housekeeper.
As a kid, I was messy. My parents cleaned, and we cleaned but the house was always disorganized and messy. To this day, my parent's house is still messy and is almost borderline hoarder status to be perfectly honest. Why? Because once you get it, it's hard to get out. Once you start collecting and not taking stuff out, it's hard to stop. Once you get out of the habit of cleaning, it is hard to get back into it. When you let things go, it is overwhelming, to say the least to take care of the problem. It can be emotionally draining to get rid of things when you have things you want to keep, you have memories with these things, you have them because you want them, like them, need them.
When I moved out on my own, I was a decent housekeeper. I put things away, vacuumed all the time, swept, mopped, cleaned the bathroom, etc. But after having a husband and a kid, things got sidelined. After moving all my "stuff" into a house that was too small for it all, collecting more and then adding my husband's stuff and daughter's stuff; the house became a disaster. It just kept getting worse and worse as we moved around and had weird storage situations. It got worse and worse as I began to work full time and not have time to myself or as much time with my family.
Before anyone starts judging: My husband also works full time, more than full time. He works 40 hours a week an hour away, teaches online classes for the local community college and is taking PhD courses. It has not always been this way, but he has always worked in some facet since we have been married. When he was home because his jobs were only online, he was working at home and although I think he could have done more to help clean, he didn't feel he had the time due to working so much. To be honest, I always underestimated what working at home takes and what teaching takes, so when I got upset about things in the house being messy or it falling upon me, I claimed he doesn't do his part. This isn't necessarily the case.
Well, now I am at home full time again. Long story short, after I got laid off due to funding cuts from a job related to my degree, after I finally found full time work again I lost my job due to calling in when my kid had a snow day from school.
It is time to buckle down and get the house in order once more. Looking at it's current state is overwhelming but it needs to be done. Don't get me wrong, it's not a disaster or a health hazard or anything but we have too much stuff that we don't need or use; I haven't given a deep clean to the house since we moved in two and a half years ago.
So I devised a plan: First, I will spot clean the usual, lived in areas. Then I will go to the areas that look pretty bad and make a plan for those areas (like the totes in the office that prevent us from using the elliptical...in order for them to go anywhere they need to go in the shed for storage...but the shed needs cleaned out first....and then they can go there until we pack up the Christmas stuff again...then that needs to go back to the top of the shed so I can clean out the storage unit so we can get storage stuff into the shed to get rid of the storage unit and save money monthly).
I write this not only to make myself accountable but to show support for others. You are not alone! Don't let anyone shame you into thinking you are the only one who has a messy house. As messy as our house is, I have been told many times that it looks clean compared to theirs or compared to other people's with children. But a messy house can sometimes derail a relationship and I sometimes feel like my husband and I are fighting over the mess or clutter and we lose something in our relationship with every bickering match we have. Unfortunately, I am not alone in that. Many marriages suffer over clutter and it is time to take back our lives. It can be done. It has to be prioritized.
No comments:
Post a Comment