This is a post wherein you will learn more about me than you probably wanted to. I admit that I'm not a terribly domesticated housewife and when it is my stretch of days to work, all housework pretty much goes out the window. I've worked five of the last six days, which never used to be a big deal until we had kids and David started working full time with a two-hour commute. I fully admit that I never truly appreciated having a house husband until he was gone. Now when we both get home from work we're tired and after the kids get to bed, the last thing we want to do is clean.
So during my work stretches, the apartment somehow gets exponentially worse with each passing day of neglect. I really don't understand how it accumulates so quickly. I think my clutter piles get frisky and reproduce when I'm away. And an imp comes in and throws things out of closets. Perhaps a disgruntled house elf goes into the kitchen and uses the dishes because I swear I just ran the dishwasher and there's no way we could be out of bowls already.
So this morning after a 6:30 wake up call asking if I could come and work today (no child care, otherwise I'd have told them that I couldn't leave my apartment for fear that it would take on the characteristics of a sentient being if I didn't clean it) I decided that enough was enough. To hold myself accountable, I took pictures of the hazmat zone current mess. And because I long ago lost my dignity, I decided to share some befores and afters. This will probably help boost your self esteem because I'm sure your place, especially your kitchen [head hangs in shame] looks better than mine right now.
So go ahead and have a good laugh at the following pictures. And I know I misspelled words. I am lost without spell check on my editing programs and I didn't want to spend the time to copy and paste all my text to check it first. So lets just pretend those mistakes aren't there, shall we? And my next post (which will probably be tomorrow) will show you the afters. Hopefully. If the imps/clutter piles/disgruntled house elves/laundry monsters don't rise up together to squash my attempts at reining in the beastly mess.
7 comments:
Lauren, I absolutely love your honesty. You also have a good sense of humor as you labeled every Cheerio in the photo. :-)
Have you heard of Fly Lady? Sometimes I use her organizing system when I am feeling overwhelmed with cleaning. Her site sends out mini reminders of things to do each day to help you keep on track. http://www.flylady.net/ I am not terribly good at following one system for extended periods of time, but this one is a good motivator for me.
I wish you the best in your endeavors!
Love the truth in your posting. :)
I felt this same way when I was working. When you are away all day and the house mess seems to multiply.
That's what weekends are for??
I must say, that behind the disorder, your apt looks nice and big. That's good.
You are awesome Lauren. So long as you can laugh it makes it all ok. Also, my kitchen looks like that way too much and I can't remember the last time I mopped. The floor is pretty sticky now so I guess that means it's time. I look forward to seeing your after pictures though. I love a good makeover :)
OK, the measuring cup is pretty bad. ;) I have to laugh, though, because I understand. Even NOT working, I find my house looking very similar to that - the pile of hand-me-downs yet to be sorted, all that stuff. Just think, it's only up from here!
This post is therapy to my soul, because our apartment quite frequently looks like this, and it is nice to know that I'm not the only one who lets the house turn to madness sometimes. But the sad part is, it is always MY mess, not Jared's or the baby's. And I don't even work outside of the home. Sigh. Now I need to follow your inspiration and get to cleaning this place up! :)
If you could only see our house most days. I think people judge me when they walk in, but I just think wait until you have kids...
Right now I have laundry clean that just needs to be put away but I can't seem to get to it, so instead it is piled a 2 ft high and 5 feet wide in the hall. You can't even walk down the hall without walking on the pile.
What? You mean that everyone else's houses aren't always perfectly clean? Because that's what I think when I look around my constant disaster of house. Thanks for posting this. It does feel good to know that I'm not the only one.
I seem to wake up Monday morning every week these days and say to myself, "This is the week I'm going to get a handle on the chaos that is my life!"
Then I work really hard, feel better about it, lose it all over again by the weekend, and have to start over next Monday. And I have no solutions for it, either.
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