I don't where it's come from, but I have turned into a complete clean freak. It's the most bizarre occurrence, seeing as how when I was a kid, I was the biggest SLOB!!! (If you don't believe me, ask my mother, or my friend Kristie who was a permanent fixture at my house in the early years...) When I lived with my parents, my room was so messy that you couldn't even see the floor. My clothes were EVERYWHERE! I have no idea how I could tell the difference between what was clean and what was dirty. Every day, my clothes were completely wrinkled and rumpled because I hate to iron. Mixed in with the clothes were game pieces, Little People, Smurfs, Barbie clothes, and who knows what else. Don't get me wrong - it's not like my mother ever cleaned my room for me. Occasionally she would have a meltdown and threaten my life if I didn't clean it up. The worst times were when she wouldn't let me go outside or watch TV until it was clean (and once, she even grounded me from the phone during a snowstorm when we had no power and nothing else to do but talk on the phone! The horror!!) But when I moved out of the house, something strange happened... All of the sudden, I turned into a clean freak.
I'm STILL not sure how this happened! My first apartment was a garage apartment, and I tend to believe that I was such a neat freak because it wasn't exactly well insulated and there were bugs... BIG bugs! I think I was afraid that if I didn't keep it spotless, the bugs would multiply even more than they already were, and that situation was bad enough as it was. After I moved out of that apartment, I moved into a two bedroom apartment with three other people. That was an experience in and of itself! My very first purchase for that apartment was a vacuum cleaner! At one point, two of my roommates went to Texas to visit family, and I was basically home alone for three glorious weeks (our other roommate was never there). After that, I decided that it was time to move into an apartment on my own. I was tired of fighting a losing battle trying to keep the house clean with three other people living there.
My next apartment was all mine! If I wanted to be messy, I could be messy. If I wanted it spotless, it was spotless. I LOVED it! I don't know if my whole mindset changed when I moved from my parents house. Maybe I just figured that if the house was going to be clean, it was going to have to be me cleaning it. Again, not that my mom ever cleaned my room for me... In fact, our house was pretty much a wreck all of the time growing up... But I digress...
I don't know when I developed a love for organization, cleanliness, and lack of clutter. All I know is that it has hit me hard. I can't stand to have things piled up on the furniture. I don't like knick-knacks because I want a nice, clean, uncluttered surface that is easy to dust. I LOVE the smell of bleach (yes, I know that's really strange) and cleaning supplies like Clorox Clean-up and Lysol. When I clean the house, I clean the house! I want all of the laundry done, the dishes done, the bathrooms immaculate, the floors clean, and NO ONE had better mess them up! This is very difficult when you live with other people! I just figure that if I'm going to spend half of the day on Saturday (which is my day off) cleaning the house, it shouldn't be too much to ask that it stay that way for at least 24 hours!
Cleaning also brings out the Goodwill beast in me. Chris gets irritated with me over this. He accuses me of being the typical woman who gets rid of everything. (Apparently his mother is a lot like this too...) He doesn't understand why you would spend your hard earned money on something, and then just give it away. He does have a valid point, however the fact that he had a salmon pink colored paisley shirt in the closet (now that was the picture of high fashion) that he couldn't possibly have worn/fit into since at least 10th grade does not bode well for his argument. Note I said had... Oh where, oh where did that shirt disappear to?? HMMM... I'll never tell! Not that he's noticed it missing... It's very difficult to be a clean freak and be married to a pack rat.
So this past weekend, the purge began. Emma is almost 9 months old now, which I hate, but it does mean that she is outgrowing things at an alarming rate. Last week, I sold her swing to the daycare. This weekend, I washed her old carseat, and gathered up the carseat bases, a bunch of her old clothes, the infant travel bed, the bug mobile, the bassinet and the baby bathtub and got everything ready to give to a friend that is having a baby in January. THEN I packed up a bunch of other clothes to give to the Goodwill, which amounted to two large trash bags full of stuff! I think I'm going to tackle our closet next, and then onward to the garage. What can I say? Some people have the gift of service, or the gift of leadership. I ORGANIZE!!
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