My brain seems to be on hiatus this week, maybe N.Lo is building his own brain cells and is sapping all the power from mine? I don't know... I feel like mainly the past couple of days, I have been *blank*. Which in some ways is good, because I haven't been thinking about certain weightier issues that have a tendency to stress me out, like certifiable family, or why, even if I'm comfortable with being a non-hob-nobber, it still bothers me on some deep, dark, junior-high-insecurities level when I'm excluded. I don't have the go-go gadget brain power to address these things at the moment. So what I do worry on, the little things that are nagging me, particularly when I'm feeling so sapped, is that I'm not doing *enough* so far as the aforementioned domestic duties are concerned. What I want to do in my day is take a nap, watch a little TV, eat a little ice cream, and not think about the eau de dog hair on the carpet, or the mildew overtaking the shower. I eat the ice cream, I watch the TV, if I'm very lucky I take the nap. But it just doesn't work for me to let lurking messes get lurkier. I can't rest. I do what I can, take care of what's most pressing: I buy A&H carpet deodizer and vacuum the house, I scrub down the bathroom, I spot-clean the kitchen. I launder, I iron, I give the baby a bath. I try to do a good job.
I think one of the problems with being home all day, though, as lucky a circumstance as it is, is that you can think too much about whether the job you're doing is good enough. When you're working outside of the home, you do what you have time and strength for inside the home, and you're golden. You're doing the best you can. But inside the home, all day, every day, there's little else you're being judged on. Obviously, no woman in the world will ever live up to the domestic ideal presented by Martha Stewart--and yet I can't shake what she said on her show recently about cleaning her bathroom every day. Is this reasonable, or even humanly possible? Then, another friend I talked to recently cleans her house in two hours every Friday, or thereabouts, and I'm like, wow. The whole house, really?! It takes me two hours to dust just our bedroom. Probably I'm just slow, but I try to be thorough. And I'll never be thorough enough, but at least most of the dust bunnies are gone, and the room looks and smells good for a few days, about once a month. My mind wanders to what other people I know are doing and not doing, and compares their household routines, which in actuality I know nothing about, with my own. Just because a friend's house is well-organized and her kitchen counters sparkle when she has guests doesn't mean that a) it's like that all the time and b) that her room corners don't have a few cobwebs just like mine do. I can't really judge my own standard of cleanliness by others and what they supposedly do, right? I'm an as-needed chore-doer by nature, I can't stick to a regime. Regime as a word just makes me feel all... regimey. Also, as mentioned many times before, we're a dog household: We're always going to live a little messy, and as not-okay as I am with the constant Battle of the Bender-Hair, I am actually okay with a little messy, a little less than perfection, or at least expected perfection.
So how do I get rid of that little Martha on my shoulder, the one who instills self-doubt and deprecation where it's not welcome or wanted or needed. Is there a cleaner that will eradicate her, a simple household solution? Or how about the tendency to endlessly compare all of what you know about your own habits to all of what you don't know about another's habits. How do we get rid of that.
Anyway, I'm spiraling a little too far down into thoughtfulness... Time for some oreos, some Last Comic Standing, and some sleep.
4 comments:
My parents are way into HGTV, so when I visited them a couple weeks ago I got bombarded with houses and spaces that are so neat, and clean, and arranged, and accented, and whatever. Mine's so not. Oh well.
Maybe I need the threat of a visiting TV crew.
you need to go garden more and write more and read more and that martha will be so busy looking and taking joy in other things that they won't stare askance at things lurking in the corner... besides dust, cobwebs, doghair are all conditions of existence- not to be controlled too much or forgotten about entirely. and never EVER taken too seriously- because life is too short at the end of your days to care very much if your house accumulated dust, but if you spent time doing the things you love and tending to yourself and family- sure don't neglect the house but you know- err on the side of grace.
well said... that's what i'm aiming for!
and maybe that's the problem, i have been watching a bit of HGTV lately. hmmmm.
It's a never ending thing... this cleaning business. There is always something that could be cleaned. My mother-in-law always had a spotless house. There was never a mold experiment in the back of the fridge, the bathroom was always clean and rarely a dirty dish in the sink even before she had a dishwasher. And there were five kids and extras. Even when she went back to work, it was the same. So when she would drop by my house to say Hi I was always feeling like augh. But I would be hospitable and quick offer a drink and a snack and we would chat and she would maybe make a little pile slowly with the crumbs on the table. One day not so very long ago, she said that she wished she hadn't spent so much of her life cleaning. If you drop by my house any day, I ask that you do not open any mystery containers at the back of the fridge, ok? Now let's go into the garden and set a spell.
Post a Comment