Cleaning ADD

This week I feel like I have cleaning ADD… Ok maybe it’s not just this week ( realistically it has probably been my whole life) but I feel like I self-diagnosed my cleaning ADD this week… so that is progress? I have good intentions… I want the dishes to be done, the floor to be mopped, things to be tidy…. But even when you have good intentions, execution is another matter.

I find my biggest hurdle, is that a large part of my job is cleaning up messes. I find myself at 10:30PM making sure floors are swept, trash is emptied, rentals stacked, dishes done…. And when I come home, the last thing I want to do is clean up my own messes. Maybe I need an event coordinator (or a house-keeper) to make sure my kitchen is ready to go for the next big thing. AKA dinner.

My good intentions always start out by saying “well if I can just get one room clean…” and then I start working on that one room, and find an out of place item, go to put it away, and then get sucked into another room, and start cleaning there…. Leaving my entire house, partially cleaned, but no one room completely organized and clutter free. Welcome to the chaos.

I have been trying to be better recently, though… once I started seriously looking for a dog, I began to realize that my house would need a serious cleaning overhaul/ puppy proofing… Though I’m still up in the air about getting a dog, I figure I really do need to start picking things up off the floor… the last thing I want is to be frantically picking up my entire house the night before I enter into “motherhood” (did I mention that if I get the dog, I will be picking him up the day after I get back from vacation, after I have worked a 12 hour event day? )

There are chores I don’t mind doing, like cleaning the bathroom, mopping the floor, weeding the garden. But when it comes to things like dishes, and folding laundry, I tend to do them begrudgingly. And unless I plan on eating take-out everyday, and buying new underwear every three weeks, I really don’t see a way around these two chores. There will always be dishes to do, and laundry to fold… and I doubt my bulldog is going to be of much help.

My mother’s house is very tidy, as is my brother’s (but that is all his wife’s doing). I just don’t have the personality. Yes, I like things to be clean, but if something comes up after I make dinner, and the dishes aren’t done, I have no problem leaving them until the next day, where-as my mother had this compulsion to do them immediately. She cannot/will not do anything else until the kitchen is back in it’s rightful state of cleanliness. I somehow didn’t get that gene, and I often wonder if the person I end up settling down with will have some of those qualities…. Or will we just be a messy disaster of a couple? I like to think not. I like to think that the universe will work out in such a way that I will end up with someone who loves doing dishes, and folding laundry (please!)

Of course, everyone has a point of no-return, and I find that I usually hit mine when I’m already running 10 minutes late, and yet feel as though I will not be able to function unless I stop what I’m doing and clean up whatever particular thing is bothering me…. I know, if I just did the dishes after EVERY meal, folded the laundry as soon as it came out of the dryer, put my clothes away after they were folded…. It wouldn’t pile up…. (seriously, I will fail as a house-wife… but I am a good cook, and I like baseball, and I will have a bulldog…. So I’m banking on the fact that my sparkling personality and these qualities will outshine the fact that I don’t have the domestic gene)

Speaking of which... there are 2 loads of laundry that need to be folded, and I should probably get on that...