Housewife Zen
I'm obsessive-compulsive and one of my crazy triggers is cleaning and organizing. This is really rather unpleasant for me and I don't like it one bit. For those of you unfamiliar with how OCD messes you up, here's how this particular form of it manifests itself for me.
It begins very normally:
1. I see a mess that needs to be cleaned up
2. I begin to clean the mess
Then it gets ugly:
3. As I clean this mess, I see something that is in dire need of scrubbing, organizing, etc.
4. I think "I can get this shining and perfect if I work at it just a little longer."
And here's the worst part:
Repeat steps 3&4 until it's 3 in the morning and you're still trying to get black crud off of that one metal pan.
I'm very glad that I haven't done this in a long while. Suffering sucks. I went through a period where, rather than risk getting tempted by the siren song of "just a little longer," I didn't do much cleaning at all. This doesn't work very well, either. I like having a clean house, but I don't want it to make me crazy. There's a middle ground and I'm still working on finding it, but I've got a fairly good idea of why cleaning my kitchen tonight was a soothing evening activity instead of an anxiety-inducing anxiety-fueled hours long suffer-fest. More later. It's my bedtime and I would like to get a halfway decent night's sleep.
It begins very normally:
1. I see a mess that needs to be cleaned up
2. I begin to clean the mess
Then it gets ugly:
3. As I clean this mess, I see something that is in dire need of scrubbing, organizing, etc.
4. I think "I can get this shining and perfect if I work at it just a little longer."
And here's the worst part:
Repeat steps 3&4 until it's 3 in the morning and you're still trying to get black crud off of that one metal pan.
I'm very glad that I haven't done this in a long while. Suffering sucks. I went through a period where, rather than risk getting tempted by the siren song of "just a little longer," I didn't do much cleaning at all. This doesn't work very well, either. I like having a clean house, but I don't want it to make me crazy. There's a middle ground and I'm still working on finding it, but I've got a fairly good idea of why cleaning my kitchen tonight was a soothing evening activity instead of an anxiety-inducing anxiety-fueled hours long suffer-fest. More later. It's my bedtime and I would like to get a halfway decent night's sleep.