Confessions of a Bipolar Neat Freak

I need to get this written out so I can see just how ridiculous I'm being.

I love to clean and I hate to clean. Cleaning overwhelms me and clutter stresses me out. I'm embarrassed by a messy house and I'm embarrassed by how much I fret about cleaning.

It starts like this: I take a cup to the kitchen from the living room. It's a short walk into my small kitchen. Along the way I notice our breakfast table has papers needing to be filed and stuff to be put away in each of our bedrooms. Ugh...I'm not a fan of filing although I want things to be organized. As I put the cup in the kitchen I reach a fork in the road -- Do I put the cup in the dishwasher or just place it in the sink for later? I then decide to put the cup in the sink and wait until I have more dishes to do. For the few minutes I'm standing at the sink I notice the spots of water on the window above the sink, the stubborn paint stains we got on our cabinets when we first moved in, the tile counter top with pieces missing, the crumbs all over the counter top, the stained stove top, and the dirty light blue tile on our floor. I immediately feel overwhelmed. I start to clean and become overwhelmed by all that I'd like to clean (which probably doesn't need it) so I just stop and it never gets done so I get stressed out so I don't clean so it becomes more cluttered and I become frazzled....you get the point. Granted the kitchen may be a bad example since we will be remodeling it early next year. However it's a place that is constantly used and seen by guests and by us. It's constantly used then it should be dirty right?

This is the dilemma. We live in our house, it is definitely a home for us. So it's natural for it to be a little messy with things laying all around. But for some reason I can't stand it when papers are piled up on our breakfast table or when there are clothes all over our bedroom. I like to blame it on the fact that we have a semi-small house. Don't get me wrong I'm VERY grateful for our house. I sometimes think we have too much stuff though and not enough places to neatly organize it away. I feel like just about every surface has piles of things. Because our kitchen is small we have to pile things on the counter. In our office we have piles of picture frames we haven't put up yet, along with piles of random items that would probably normally go in a desk drawer, of which we don't have. In our bedroom we constantly have piles of clothes laying on the ironing board.

Ok "piles" plural may be exaggerating. If you started to get the picture of a hoarder I've gone too far. We don't overspend and certainly don't have problems throwing things away. Although I sometimes feel like we could easily be on the show, I know the producers would hysterically laugh us out of their submission pile. Actually, I LOVE to throw stuff away. In fact I'd rather throw stuff away that is probably still useful then keep it around to have it clutter up the space. Yet another dilemma, I don't want to be wasteful. Have a yard sale you might say. Yes, we do those but we don't currently have enough big ticket items to draw customers in. Then donate it. I'm not sure the Good Will has a place for sticky wall mount thingies. Again, things that are useful I just haven't found a place for them yet.

Here's the good part in all of this, I can recognize how ridiculous I get about it. I know our house is really not that messy, but it FEELS messy. Another problem with this situation is I compare our house to other's houses. If I walk into a house I look around and see counter tops free and clear of clutter. I see tables and desks empty because each item has it's individual place. Floors are free from tripping hazards. Bedrooms have neatly made beds with nightstands void of books which haven't been read for over 3 months.

I can honestly say I think this has all been triggered by staying at home with Hadley. In part because she has her own toys she scatters about the house and I am home a lot more to walk around and notice things, which probably never bugged me before. Hadley's toys don't really bother me because they do have their own place to which they go each evening. However, I think having to clean up after her every night has compounded my dislike for cleaning in general.

In closing, I've accepted the fact that I will be daily cleaning most of my house until we are empty nesters. For one, because there will only be two of us. Two, because maybe by then we will have developed better habits about putting things away right away. And three because maybe we'll have just a little bit bigger house to store things in an organized fashion. For now I will dream of a professional organizer coming in to our house and showing me the ways of the clean, the ways of the de-cluttered and de-stressed.

*Exaggeration was used for dramatic effect.