When I left work on Thursday, knowing that I had to take a vacation day on Friday to wait for the cable repair guy (who by the way didn’t show up until Saturday), I made a deal with myself. I made an intensive to-do list and told myself that I wasn’t getting a slouch day just because I wasn’t going to work; plus I promised myself that if I got everything on the list done this weekend, I would buy myself a brand new 30G iPod — something I’ve been wanting but couldn’t justify buying myself.
So, the list:
- straighten the living room
- clean the kitchen
- straighten so-called dining room (actually a large breezeway and I still don’t have a dining room table)
- clean bathroom
- do all of the laundry (including folding all of the clothes and putting it away)
- clean the litterboxes
- clean bedroom (including re-organizing the dresser, built-in drawers, and chest of drawers & vacuum)
- straighten garage
- go to the dump (including hauling all of the recyclables, especially all of those boxes)
- hang curtains in the craft room (so Mom will stop nagging)
- sweep first floor & mop tiles
Now my therapist looked at the list and clearly thought I could do it all in one day, which I just don’t understand. Has she not been listening? Doesn’t anyone else let things slip past a point where one day is not going to get the house in shape? Maybe if you try to picture Bobbie Markowitz’s house in The Stepford Wives? I’m not saying this is how I like things. I’m saying this is a sign of a depressive mind and once it reaches such a state, it’s even harder to sort your way out of it. It just feels so overwhelming. The more you look at it, the more disappointed in yourself you feel because you’ve let everything get this way and yet you can’t seem to figure out where to starting your way out so you just keep getting more depressed and this only adds to the depression you all ready have.
But like I said, I drew a line in the sand. I decided to start making some positive movements with my life. So, armed with my list and with the incentive of a new iPod, I woke up at my usual time on Friday, had my breakfast and got started.
Friday, I got started on the laundry, straightened the living room, cleaned the kitchen, straightened the dining room, which turned out to be mostly misplaced trash and boxes needing to go to the dump, cleaned the bathroom to the detriment of my fingernails* with are now soft and bendy and had to be cut, cleaned the litterboxes, swept the downstairs and moped the tiles. I even made a spaghetti dinner, which then meant I had to reclean the kitchen. Unfortunately, that’s one of the problems with cleaning, discovering that it’s never really done.
So that took me from 8:30am to 6pm with a lunch break and short breaks for walking the dog and checking the web. I was exhausted. My feet were killing me and arms hurt.
Saturday, I got up at my usual work time again and got started much to my Pug’s confusion. I think he’s confused because all of my things he likes to play with (like my dirty clothes and my shoes) were disappearing. I spent about two hours working in my bedroom. I redid all of the drawers, cleaned off the tops of everything so the cat doesn’t have much to knock off in the middle of the night, striped the bed of the linens, including the bed ruffle, and vacuumed. There were tons of empty soda cans up there.
I got started back on the laundry and restraightened the living room and kitchen. I was discovering that every time I cleaned one room, I had to go back and restraighten one I’d already done as things drifted back to where they belonged. Oy.
Next, Pugly went to hang out in the front yard, where he secretly dug a hole in my garden next to my daisies while I straightened my garage and fought spiders. I put all of the bird seed into two Rubbermaid containers that are big enough to hold the bags but small enough that they won’t be too heavy and sealed enough that the chipmunk can’t get at the birdseed anymore.
Then I took all of the collected trash, recyclables, and boxes I’m not keeping to the dump. This took 3 trips. Pugly rode in the front seat and immensely enjoyed his job of guarding the Jeep and saying “Hello” to everyone at the dump. However, I didn’t enjoy being reprimanded by one of the recycle sorter Nazi guys, who thought I should have taken some of what I’d labeled trash to the compost — I didn’t even know our dump had a compost.
Then I went home and proceeded to spend 1-1/2 to 2 hours hanging these cool orange retro curtains my mother made for my craft room/office up. It wouldn’t have been so bad but the previous owners had glued blind holders to the wood frames outside of the window and then screwed them in and then outside of that had put up curtain rod holders but too small for my curtain rods and used tiny screws with philips heads that my screwdrivers didn’t fit. There were a pair of windows. Oy.
It took the rest of the day to finish the laundry, but I did it. Of course, the very last thing I had to do was put that bed back together including the bed ruffle — not easy to do by yourself when you have a Queen bed and the Pug and the two cats think helping means standing on the mattress while you are trying to lift it.
I hurt all over and my feet thought the end of the world was coming, but I did it.
I was extremely proud of myself when I crossed that last thing off of my list. Such a great feeling of accomplishment, especially after so many months of feeling hopeless and depressed and feeling as if I was just wasting time and that nothing was ever going to get done and even if it did, it was a waste to do so. My house, well, the 80% of it that got cleaned this weekend — there are 3 more rooms — looks wonderful and it feels so good to walk into those rooms and see how clean they look and know that I did that and really that feeling is way better than an iPod.
Oh, but I went to Target yesterday morning and bought a black 30G iPod. I’m listening to it now.
I also have a huge list of projects I’m making and I’m going to start making small reasonable weekend goals with smaller incentives. Now that I know I can do it, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t.
* I really hate cleaning supplies. I know they can’t be good for the environment because look what they do to my nails! It never fails that afterward, even when I wear gloves, my nails are left soft and bendy and looking decalcified. When I worked at a video store rental place for about 6 months once, they used this highly toxic stuff that left my nails so bad they could actually be torn like tissue they were so thin. There has to be a better way to get the gunk out of my sink.
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