Cleaning a Messy House
Over the past few months, as I’ve gotten to the point where many areas of my home are under control more than they ever were pre-blog, I have started cleaning up and organizing areas that are particularly difficult. Areas where getting started is the hardest part.
If you’re a regular reader, you’ve probably noticed that my newest self-talk phrase is: “Do the Easy Stuff First!”
I thought I would put this concept into its own post so I can link back later for new readers.
Not that I would know, since I’ve never been normal.
I’ve shared my steps for cleaning up a very messy house. Part of that process is not worrying about the areas which are out of sight and out of mind. But my heart desires that ultimately, this deslobification process will include the out-of-sight places, They are MY places, so they’re never truly out-of-my-mind.
I’m always one lost office supply away from tears of frustration over my inability to keep them under control.
Since my Slob Vision causes messes to be viewed as one big insurmountable problem instead of individual small problems, I sometimes get paralyzed before I even start. Which means I don’t start, and the problem gets worse.
So . . . . I do the Easy Stuff first.
I remove, or put back in place, the things that have a designated home somewhere else in the house (or even in that room . . . sometimes two feet away). Like dirty laundry that’s on the floor. Or a bicycle in the playroom. Or a life-jacket in the master bedroom. Or something else that probably only happens in my home.
I’m generally amazed at how much Easy Stuff there is in the disaster-zone I’m tackling.
Once I get the Easy Stuff out of there, the Hard Stuff isn’t any less hard, but it is less. Meaning the piles are smaller and my despair-level is lower. And the visual progress from removing the Easy Stuff spurs me on to tackle more.
Make sense?
Concepts like these that seem to be simple for others, but are life-changing for me, are why I have this blog. My tag-line is “Figuring Out Why I am this Way, and What I Can Do to Change” . . . and that’s what I’m doing. I’m figuring myself out.
I’m accepting that my slob-brain doesn’t see the easy stuff as easy stuff until I verbally tell it to. And I’m perfectly fine with verbally telling it, if that’s what I need to do to get this mess cleaned up.
