Serious Question

Why is cleaning so hard for me? I mean, in all honesty, it should not be this difficult to, you know, clean your room. It's not that I lack discipline in general (I mean, I lack discipline in things that are unappealing, but I always got good grades, eventually got around to doing my homework, balanced tasks, etc.), so I don't understand why I'm like a toddler when it comes to cleaning my room. Or cleaning anything. Or doing things.

I'm currently in the process of hanging up the clothes that have been in the floor. Every time I think I'm close to being done, I realize that there's another pile of clothes sitting over the chair, or another pile in the corner. Yes, part of the problem is that I have too many clothes, which is true. One of my goals this year is to try to wear everything I own, and if I can't, to get rid of it and let someone who might actually wear it have the chance. I wonder if part of it is my perfectionism. I have an interesting strain of this particular disease, in that I'm an apathetic perfectionist. I want things to be perfect, but when they're not going to be, I tend to just say "Meh... screw it." So I look around my room and I say "I want to organize my desk and get it perfect, I want to go through my dresser drawers, I want to organize my shoes/closet/clothes/underbed boxes/decorations, etc." and it becomes overwhelming and I realize I have neither the time, nor the energy (nor really when it comes down to it, the mind for organization. I never know how to organize things. My brain just doesn't work like that.) to actually do it right, so I just say "Meh... screw it." and I leave it half done, which is worse than not starting at all.

Anyway, my mom has been out of town taking care of my grandfather and she's coming home tomorrow. She does have the organization/cleanliness gene that I so sorely lack and it would make her life much easier if my stuff was clean and organized. That's like, a big deal to her. Apparently the best gift I can give her is the ones that five-year-olds give their parents because they don't have money and it's a big deal when little kids clean their rooms, whereas it shouldn't be as big a deal when your grown adult child who lives with you does it. And yet... here we are.

So, I really want to get this done, but it's already 11:30 (posting this took about 5 minutes, so that's not really keeping me from finishing) and I have to be at work at 9 tomorrow, which means I have to leave here by no later than 7:30 and really earlier, and then I have a full day of work followed by a personal training session and I won't be home until 10:30 tomorrow. So, as much as I'd like to get this done, it probably won't happen and then it will continue to linger and then I'll be the world's worst kid. And scene.

Confession

Let me be clear about something. I am a slob. There is no doubt about it. I am a grade-A, genuine, certified, slob. I do not have the "neat" or "clean" drive. When something has been sitting where it doesn't belong for days (or weeks...) I do not feel a compulsion to pick it up and move it. All of my clothes have been sitting in the floor of my bedroom for two weeks and I haven't yet hung them back up, because I just don't care all that much. My bedroom in college was a FEMA-worthy disaster area, with dirty clothes all over the place because I was too lazy to take my clean clothes out of my laundry bag and actually have a place for the dirty ones. My college roommate didn't seem to mind (Bless her.) as long as she had a clear path through my room into the bathroom (it was a weird arrangement, see floorplan below).


Each two-room suite had an entrance from the stairway. Originally designed as a sitting area and a shared bedroom, one room has a fireplace and access to the main door, while the second has both closets and access to the bathroom. Now most students have two separate bedrooms, so the outside roommate walks through the inside room to use the bathroom/closet, and the inside roommate walks through the outside room to enter/exit. It seems like it wouldn't work, but it does. You're sharing a living space, without sharing a room.

Anyway, my college roommate didn't seem to mind, and when I had my Roommate from Hell at UMD, I made it clear that I always kept common areas clean, but kept my room a mess, and she said that was OK. (Turns out, she didn't care too much about cleanliness in the common areas as she left her T-shirt in the floor of the living room for literally three months, but my lack of need to clean allowed it to stay there until I finally picked it up, folded it, and put it on the arm of the couch, where I'm pretty sure it remained until I moved out.)

But I would like to be a little bit cleaner. It was awkward in college when a guy made it clear that he might like to see me socially for an evening, as it were, and I couldn't invite him over because my room put most fraternity houses to shame. Not that I was ever going to invite anyone back to my room anyway because I'm just not really that kind of girl, but the opportunity wasn't there even if I had been.

With my grandfather moving in with us, I think it's time for me to consolidate some of the stuff I've accumulated over the years and really try to live my life in a cleaner, more organized way. Maybe if things aren't so overwhelming, I'll eat better, exercise more, and be more focused. Probably not, because cleaning my room isn't likely to be a life-altering experience, but a girl can dream, right?

I think I'm going to start today with my office. For two weeks, I've been trying to clean my office in between students wandering in to see me (I really need office hours) and answering every question about university policy, grading, registration, etc., that anyone can think to ask me, plus meetings and other necessary functions of my job. So, I haven't been all that successful. To be honest, there is still stuff in this office from when I moved into it that I've never gone through or that I didn't even know was there until I recently discovered it. So maybe today, since I have to be at work anyway, in addition to doing a little bit of reading for marketing, which I'm behind in already, I will try to get some serious cleaning done and reclaim my office, before going home and trying to do the same thing with my bedroom, my stuff in the basement, my closet, and my storage unit. I'm pretty ambitious, but it sucks that I'm also pretty lazy. We'll see what can be done.