Ever feel really accomplished just to look around feel like it didn’t make a difference?
With three dogs, approximately 60 chickens and ducks outside and three children two weekends a month, the housework can pile up quickly. Then, once you finally feel that satisfaction of having completed a task like laundry or dishes or mopping, muddy pawprints or a mysterious pile of dirty clothes or dinner takes place and suddenly it feels like you are right back where you started.
I experience slight compulsions for order and cleanliness which can cause my anxiety to flare up over the simplest, most insignificant of things. My constant urges to clean ALSO causes my anxiety to flare up because I feel like I never have a chance to rest or relax or enjoy anything.
So what is a woman to do?
Force herself to agree to a compromise.
So here it is. For the next two weeks my husband will take on more responsibility around the house to help out. He has chosen to clean the bathroom as well as kitchen appliances.
I am to clean on one day only. Apart from necessary tasks such as taking out the trash, oading up the dishwasher or cleaning up things from dinner. Everything else on just one day. That will then leave the remaining six days of the week for me to relax more and spend more time with family. In his mind, this will, for all intents and purposes, force me to worry less about housework because I’m not allowed to do anything until Saturday or Sunday.
At this point I think it is only fair to mention that I am stubborn to a fault and have been doing things my own way since I moved out and went to college. So admitting that there was another way to do anything was not something I was keen to do. But sometimes the most important things are the difficult ones.
If I’m being totally honest, part of the reason I finally agreed was so that, when it didn’t work, he would finally just leave me be to do things my way.
And so the two week trial period begins. I spent the majority of Saturday and some of Sunday doing absolutely everything on my to-do list. I felt great afterward. I was actually amazed there wasn’t more to do once I finally finished everything.
Now, the difficult portion begins. To do nothing. Like a cleaning junkie, I find myself trying to plot what I could do secretly before he gets home from work to get some kind of “fix.”
Instead I am forcing myself to attempt to focus, not on the compulsion or the anxiety, but on what is truly important. Family. Quality time. So I will create as much order as I can out of nightly dinners and clean up and then allow myself time to decompress from the day and wind down with a book or conversation or television.
While I am sure these two weeks will not be easy and I’m unsure whether this whole cleaning routine will really work out, particularly in the laundry department, I will be making an effort to ensure that our children don’t have to come hunt me down and ask when I’m coming to watch a movie with them or my husband isn’t asking me to come sit with him for over an hour because I’m “busy doing stuff.”
I will compromise because, even if the cleaning schedule is under control, my anxiety isn’t.
And maybe, just maybe, allowing myself to change my routine will ease my compulsive, anxious mind.
