Welcome to today’s Random Reality Check.
I love sharing tips and recipes and such, but the main thing that matters around here is reality.
There’s Theory of Keeping a House Under Control, and then there’s Reality of Keeping a House Under Control for Someone Who Really Wishes It Would Just Stay Under Control On Its Own So She Could Do Fun Things Like Plan Parties and Direct Plays and Write Books and Maybe Learn to Knit.
This blog is the second kind.
Anyway, I thought I’d give a reality check report on this beautiful Monday morning.
I decided to write this post last night, at a time when I felt my reality was pretty admirable (considering the slob-thing). I felt pretty under control when I was in bed before 10:00. I even woke up gently just before my alarm went off at 4:45 so I could get to my 5 a.m. workout.
And then, I could NOT find a certain piece of, ahem . . . equipment that is rather essential for a workout of any kind.
Like, couldn’t find either of my two equipment options.
So I didn’t work out.
I was so irritated with myself as I crawled back under my warm covers.
Anyway, that kind of sums up how things are right now. My dining area, living room, and kitchen are clean. Clean enough that we had people over last night for our church home group. The gameroom (that people have to enter to get to the guest bathroom) is mostly clean. The floor is clear. The sides of the room are more cluttered than a Normal Person’s home, but pretty good for me.
And just to be clear, I’m proud of that picture (explanations and all) of my living room on a random Monday morning.
Oh. There is a corner of clutter in the Dining Room. It’s made up of we’re-in-the-middle-of-something-but-people-are-coming-over-so-I-need-to-clear-the-table projects. They’re balanced on top of a box of books that I meant to take to Half-Price Books at least a year ago when I was going somewhere in Hubby’s car. Then, six months ago (or so), he needed the trunk space and hauled them back inside.
Leaving them out in plain sight will help me remember to take them, right? (<–one of my favorite delusions)
Last night I felt pretty good. Monday mornings are pretty nice when I spend an hour or so cleaning on Sunday afternoon. And as long as I keep up with doing MOST of my daily tasks through the week, it will only take an hour or so the next Sunday afternoon and I’ll avoid Disaster Status. (Usually.)
It’s a routine that works well for me right now.
But then, I get those rude reminders that all is nowhere near perfect when things happen like happened this morning.
Bedrooms (with their lovely closable doors) are my nemesis.
Especially my own bedroom.
I worked in there last week (post coming up soon) and made HUGE progress. Lovely progress. In just two little ol’ hours.
But those two little ol’ hours revealed how many clothes had escaped my wash-everything-in-the-house Laundry Days. And the resulting laundry pile was somewhat ridiculous, even more so since we’ve been on Bare Minimum Clothes Washing Status for over a week since my washing machine died and I’ve been using a friend’s while we wait for my new one to be delivered this week.
I know my pink “equipment” is in the pile. It has to be.
But it’s mixed in with all sorts of random things that probably weren’t technically dirty but fell to the floor from their precarious perch atop my Pile of Good Intentions. (Y’know. The end of my bed where I “neatly” place the things I only wore for a short time that I could wear again. But then don’t. And then they fall to the floor.)
AND, I have another piece of “equipment” that I haven’t seen in weeks.
So that’s my reality check. I’ve come a long way. I dread spending an hour or so each Sunday afternoon getting the house ready to let people in the front door, but it’s a thousand-times better than my pre-blog way of making creative excuses for why I could never (ever) host gatherings unless I knew I had two weeks to clean.
But I will always struggle.
I sometimes wonder if I’ll EVER get our master bedroom under control in a sustainable way. In a way where I’m not overly proud of it having a mostly clear floor even though a laundry pile as tall as my oldest kid waits to be spread back out over the floor in an insanely-early-in-the-morning moment of panic.
What’s your reality right now?
For detailed guides, check out my books: How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind and Decluttering at the Speed of Life.
--Nony
I just love your posts! Makes me realize I’m not the only one who lives like this! My mother is Martha Stewart made over and I have always felt like I had to be her~ now I realize there are others like me who struggle 🙂 Thank you for the wonderful posts! Love them and read everyday!
Just a tip: Oh that is a bummer when the washer breaks down! Where I live (in NY state) laundrymats will wash your clothes in large amounts and charge by the pound. Drop them off in the AM and pick them up, already folded and bagged by the time specified at the laundrymat. Same day service and it gives you time to focus on other things till it is done.
“Leaving them out in plain sight will help me remember to take them, right?” — Thanks for this reminder. Although I am a non-slob, my husband is. It sometimes baffles me that I leave something on the steps to be taken downstairs and he go up and down a dozen times without taking the item. Slob-vision. Better just take it to the basement myself 🙂
So why is it we are never cured? My morning routines are helping. My boys LOVE the cupboard doors being shut. I’ve almost got the morning routine of daily tasks memorized without having to look then up. They are not second nature, but I’m embracing them. I try to keep them to what i can accomplish no matter what before I leave the house. So why is it I knew I will revert back and have to try again? Why us it once a slob, always a slob?
Husband was away for a long weekend, leaving me with three under six. And I just did not get much done. On top of a buffet piled with the “stuff” leftover from emptying my craft room so we could paint it.
So I should get up, set the timer for 20 minutes and made a dent in the floors and the flats surfaces.
Sometimes I think you ask too much of yourself. Yes, a tidy home is great for everyone. But you can’t expect to LIVE in it with a passel of kids and parents and have it stay neat. Don’t beat yourself up about the messes that accumulate if you regularly dig in and clean them up. Having to clean up for company is not failure. (Having said all that, I am not applying it to your master bedroom. 😉 )
I guess I wasn’t clear. I’m totally proud of how the overall house looks for a normal day! (It’s the master bedroom that will forever be my nemesis!)
But does it have to be your nemesis? I’ve been giving your master bedroom some thought (because it’s easier to think about the room you struggle with the most then it is for me to think about the room I struggle with the most, then I can switch my thoughts to my room) anyway I had a thought that you could apply those lessons you learnt in the first year of deslobification process to just your bedroom. They worked for your whole house, so should would work in your bedroom too, right? Anyway, it’s just a thought, I know you and I don’t like being told what to do, so I definitely don’t want to do that. But, once I’ve gotten things a bit more under control (I fell off the wagon a bit lately – thanks so much for that podcast! It helped me through) I’m going to have to try the daily task approach on my sewing room.
On an aside, it makes me feel better knowing your master bedroom is a disaster area.
I totally agree that’s exactly what I need to do! (Now I just have to do it . . . )
I can’t seem to get past the ‘it’s a project’ stage with my sewing room. I think because to clean I have to declutter first. So much more decluttering to do *sigh* I need to figure out what the sewing room equivalent of doing the dishes is.
Thanks Dana, I just had to work that out in my head, and I’ve only just realised what I need to figure out while writing this.
I just finished (re)listening to one of your podcasts while sorting out that room, I’m going to go put on another and keep going.
You can’t expect to live in it if it’s a disaster zone either though. My partner is CONSTANTLY complaining how we never see people, never go do things, never go to the movies, never go to the museum, never have people over for game night, never do this, never do that… But he take 30 minutes to load the dishwasher that takes me 5, if I could bend over and wouldn’t have a panic attack doing it. It takes him 2 hours to wipe down a vanity, mirror, and toilet, and sweep half the bathroom floor (not like the left half, but like half of it twice while skipping spots), while it takes me 20 minutes (and three days of recovery thanks to chronic illness). He will reach PAST the spot that something actually lives, to put it down somewhere else “for now” where it’s usually precariously balanced and in the way of everything. He will step (read: trip) over the same thing in the middle of the floor a dozen times or more instead of taking one step out of the way or, heaven forbid, moving the thing that isn’t difficult to move. We can’t live in the house if it’s dirty, he agrees with that; he agrees that the house needs to be cleaned up to a certain degree to have people over. I do everything I’m able to and then some. But Something is stopping him from doing what needs done so that we CAN play games and do crafts and have people over on a whim, and he’s not interested in finding out what that Something is and doing anything about it. Natural consequences, I’m afraid.
Have you read this? https://www.aslobcomesclean.com/2010/10/defining-normal/
Is cleaning help totally out of the question? Someone who will vacuum, clean bathrooms, and mop the kitchen floor? It’s been a lifesaver for me, and only two hours every other week. Sorry you’re having such a hard time.
Also, perhaps hubby needs Dana’s “How to teach Kids to Clean” lessons to be more effective. Hope things work out.
I have been reading your blog for quite a while now, but I’m not sure that I have ever commented…
Anyway, your post about your morning routine getting messed up reminded me of my morning today… I woke up this morning all excited that I was getting myself organized for a good productive week, and then while unloading the dishwasher this morning (I have tried to take on your dishwasher on at night routine), I dropped a dish and broke it, cutting my finger in the process and that pretty much through my whole morning off…
Ugh! That’s so frustrating!!
Thank you for sharing your posts. I can relate to not having people over because of needing at least 2 weeks notice. Right now I’ve started decluttering my house again! But this time I am trying to just do a little every day, instead of cleaning like a mad woman and hiding everything in plastic totes. My biggest challenge is currently my dinning room. It has become the temporary storage area for those mystery totes. Unfortunately temporary has been since November. Most of it is craft and sewing supplies for projects that I haven’t started because I can’t find something I need. I’m currently decluttering cabinets, closets and dressers, so I have a place to put things I want to save. Your posts remind me to keep going and not to give up. Something little every day makes a difference.
Ahhhh, the Master Bedroom again. Bugger! Like the above commenter, I have thought about your room, too, while avoiding thinking about my own nemesis, of course.
Do you still do your focused pick-up daily? I’ve often wondered why you don’t do one in your room – or extend your existing pick-up by 5 or 10 minutes and spend that time on your room. I would think that even 5 min a day would do wonders in there.
I don’t say this as a critique, but truly more of an “I wonder.”
Your daily dishwasher thing has been huge at my house and my husband is totally on board with it. We run it every night, whether it’s full or not. Huge. HUGE! 🙂
My bedroom is the same way! It’s kind of a catchall for everything. My laundry room also happens to be next door and it seems like the laundry likes to hang out there. I wish there was some way to get it clean and keep it clean as the clutter really bugs me.Even when I clean it theres still a messy vibe:(
I do feel better after reading your posts. And NOTot that my house is in any better shape, but that I can relate to your problems SO well…. sigh…. But you also inspire me. That I TOO can do better. A little at a time.
Wanna prick our fingers and be slob sisters?
All of us slob sisters need to hear this quote I read from some quaint Web site as a reality check:
The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel. ” – Steven Furtic
Oh I love this quote! So true.
I struggle with the big bedroom pile of clothes that are mixed in with shoes? Bag of returns? Bag of stuff recently purchased but not used cause I couldnt find them?……
Currently I am trying a couple of things. I actually put a laundry hamper (not a laundry basket) in my room.Then I got an over the door hanger with several hooks on it( facing the inside of the room so I can still shut my door) and also installed something similar on the wall. The bedroom hamper in my room working pretty good. The laundry room one- is not. hanging stuff on the hooks in the bedroom- seems to be helping. Not that attractive, but is an improvement. We’ll see how it goes. I laughed at who ever mentioned the pile of “mystery totes”!
My reality right now is that the exit from the road of good intentions seems to move just out of my reach every time I get near it. My office is to me what your bedroom is to you. I want to say that as a container, it’s too small when in reality, all I really need to do is accept that it is what it is – and start purging everything that’s not absolutely necessary to my work.
And having said that, the exit moved just a little farther down the road… :/
My living has half empty boxes pushed back to the wall from when we started to go thru them after our move into our new house. The end table by my chair is piled high with mail and magazines. My dishwasher is empty; the utensil holder on the kitchen counter as I did not feel like putting them away; the sink is full of dirty dishes.
Our bedroom has has full boxes of things I need to put back in the master bathroom we had remodeled the beginning of December.
My crafts room is full of boxes I haven’t gone thru yet.
My husband just left this morning to go to Super Bowl in Phoenix. I couldn’t wait to see him off so that I could clean this house lol. I’ve got so much to do but I’m very optimistic and realistic at the same time.