Cross-posted and archived from DC Metro Moms. Original post date April 23, 2008.
The birds are chirping. The windows are open and the pollen is making its way inside my own home. What’s that you say? It is time for what? Oh right. The inevitable urge I get this time each year to go all crazy lady on my house and my yard. Everything must be new! Everything must be organized! Everything must be clean, fresh and tidy! Skedaddle you dust bunnies! Be gone weeds or is that weed be gone?
This year I am a bit behind. The prolonged, never-ending feeling of sickness has been pervasive in my house since I creeped into my seventh week of pregnancy. Now almost at the end of the first trimester it still drags me down into its afternoon nap time abyss. The act of unloading or loading the dishwasher makes me ralph into the kitchen sink. I know. I wouldn’t visit my house for dinner anytime soon either.
Yet with the new addition of a deck in our back yard recently I felt compelled to not just keep the lawn mowed but to plant new flowers and embrace Spring to its fullest. Despite finding the smell of potting soil most vile indeed. I want to rip open every closet in my house and tear it a new one. Or ahem, organize it and bring out the seasonal clothes at least. See, when it comes to spring cleaning the most anal-retentive part of me comes out. I’m like combination of Rosie from the Jetsons crossed with Bree Van de Kamp on smack.
Suddenly, I notice that my baseboards are covered in a dirty coating of dust. Each light bulb and light fixture must be polished and the need to steam clean my carpets and hand scrub my wood floors becomes all consuming. I almost feel I cannot leave my house. My neighbors say I must be nesting early but I know better. My dirty little secret is that I am a total clean freak. When everything isn’t in its place my attitude, creativity and drive goes right down the baking soda cleaned toilet. When I try to suppress this closeted Domestic Diva I find myself becoming irritable, listless and yes, a tad bit bored. My need for clean spaces is currently over-riding even my most queasy moments and I find myself on hands and knees wiping my walls. It isn’t all fun and games though. The other day I managed to vacuum up not just the drapes but my hair and my jeans all in a ten-minute span. It was a less than diva moment to be sure.
What is the point of all this besides airing my sad little secret? It’s that in coming in clean (No pun intended. OK, maybe a little bit intended.) I am able to rest easy. It is out there for the world to see and in that way I can let it go and feel that a maybe, just maybe, a little slacking on the baseboards and dirt in the corners is not as bad as I make it out to be. If you see a sign on my front door saying, “Quarantined” you’ll know I went a bit too far.
Comments
Linda said…
Oh, I don’t know. My house is a total mess, but I have times of the year–usually when the seasons change–that i freak about stuff as well. Baseboards, yes. Weeds, yes. Hall closet, yes. Rusty crap on the deck from the winter, yes. It may be nesting it may just be natural. There’s a reason it’s called spring cleaning. I remember my neighbor hanging out of her window one time to clean the outside. She hadn’t noticed all the winterized dirt on there. Of course, then I noticed mine too. Must clean windows! Good luck.
