This post has nothing to do with bluebonnets either.
This post is about Kyoo's Cleaning Pride Cycle. Very similar to the pride cycle, with a few adjustments. Let's review.
The Pride Cycle:
Blessing and Prosperity
This is when the Kyoo condo is clean. The dish towels are freshly laundered. I get home from work and excitedly put my shoes and bag away. The trash gets taken out regularly. I devote at least half an hour every day to sorting the mail and tidying up odds and ends. My shower is not a slip-n-slide. Et cetera.
This stage might last up to 3 weeks.
Pride and Sin
This is when I start to get lazy. The mail gets left on the table one day. The dishwasher doesn't get unloaded and consequently dirty ones start piling up in the sink. But it's ok. Because these are just little messes. It'll all get cleaned up later, I tell myself.
But later I'm busy and then I'm too tired and then a new week begins and the dish pile gets bigger and the shower gets slimier and the recyclables start towering perilously in the closet and the laundry doesn't get put away. I do like having a clean house so there's a certain amount of disassociation that must occur. I develop some kind of immunity or blinders to the mess. "Nanananananananaaaaa I can't see you I'm not looking!". That kind of thing. I usually make an effort here and there but it's just a few chisels at the iceberg of disarray, really.
This stage can last up to 2 months.
Chastening
Eventually, I can no longer ignore the messes. Either I'm compelled (someone's stopping by unexpectedly) or I compel myself (the Kyoo subconscious sits in work meetings all day playing out homemaking fantasies of organizing the food pantry and mopping all the floors and placing fresh-cut flowers on the dining room table).
Right now I'm feeling that rumble. That rumble that wants to strip my condo naked, give it a good shower, and dress it just so.
This has been going on for 3 weeks. I don't know how much longer I can put this off.
Humility and Repentance
The Kyoo condo gets cleaned. Mostly. This stage deserves a bit more attention. Allow me to review what happened last time:
It all started with French toast. I'd made this delicious French toast, you see, and obviously I wanted to eat it. But my table was covered in mail and newspapers and magazines and more mail and a couple boxes and a water bottle and a shirt.
It was a mess.
And as I stood in the kitchen, eating my French toast on a plate over the sink in refined bachelor(ette) fashion, I could no longer procrastinate my "repentance".
Suddenly my blinders were removed. The floors were covered in food and shoe debris and the mail was staging a riot on the dining room table and the bathrooms were cultivating the next generation of deadly bacteria and the Christmas tree was pining for it's storage bin and MY WHOLE LIFE JUST STARTED SCREAMING FOR ORDER!
It was overwhelming.
I put on my cleaning clothes and set to work. It started in the kitchen. I loaded up the dishwasher. But then I had to run upstairs for more Clorox wipes to clean the counters. And while I was upstairs I noticed the bathroom needed more toilet paper. So I went to the laundry closet where I store it and got distracted folding a load I had left in the dryer. Then I started pondering about when the last time I'd washed my sheets was and soon I was ripping those off the bed and stuffing them into the washer. That's when I remembered why I'd gone upstairs in the first place and retrieved the wipes and returned to the kitchen.
The kitchen counters got cleaned but I realized I still had my Christmas dish towels out and suddenly had the desire to start putting Christmas decorations away. That task proved daunting and after storing a few wreaths and my nativity set, I found myself back upstairs organizing my filing cabinet.
(this is a riveting play by play, i know).
So almost an hour later, there I sat in my room, leaned up against my ottoman, completely surrounded by my piles. The "keep" pile, the "throw away" pile, the "shred" pile, the "move this somewhere else" pile. All these piles springing forth like small suburbs.
It was in the midst of this reorg that I fizzled out. Afternoon hit like a train and I couldn't make important decisions like "do i group product warranty papers with instruction manuals or keep them filed separately?" anymore.
I had started no less than 16 odd cleaning projects around my house and hadn't finished a one.
And that's when all I wanted to do was pop a bag of popcorn and bake up some sweet potato fries and watch Big Bang Theory.
So I did.
At least ten episodes.
And a nap.
I eventually roused myself from the couch and tidied up a few loose ends, but the day ended with a massive "To Do" list.
It took me another week to whittle that list down to just a few tasks I was ok with procrastinating.
Those tasks are forever entombed on my whiteboard, for the record.
Now, I think where I was going with all this is, first, I have cleaning ADD. And second, I'm feeling that rumble/getting bit by that bug. Spring cleaning! My condo is in chaos and I am DREAMING about cleaning it. Maybe not the cleaning part but the having a clean condo part. I'm fantasizing about a behind-the-oven that doesn't house forgotten cooking spoons and food chunks that have slipped off the counter. I wistfully stare at my food pantry with organization ideas buzzing in my head. I long for my desk to be clear of papers and mail and old bills. And I hope for the day I will no longer fear being toppled by recyclables upon opening my utility closet.
I love having my own condo and I love when it is clean and organized and just so.
It's just, no matter how hard or what I try, I still go thru the cleaning pride cycle. And I still haven't conquered my cleaning ADD so that repentance stage is such a long, painfully drawn out and complicated process. It's going to happen this weekend, I know it is, and the only goal I'm setting for myself is to come out of the whirlwind with a "To Do" list that's smaller than the one I start with.
Maybe I should add each of the shows I'll probably end up watching to that list before I start...
And that's that. Blogging excitement right there.
Have a great day :-)
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