Confessions of a Dirty Girl

My apartment is a reflection of my life.  Some days it’s so clean and organized that people wonder if anyone actually lives here… today is not that day.  Today is the day that it’s so messy and dirty that I can’t figure out how I ever let it get so out of control.  As I sit here writing this blog, I’m surrounded by chaos.  Laundry is piled up everywhere… some of it clean and some of it dirty.  Dishes are in the sink, on the counter, on the table… everywhere but in the dishwasher.  In fact, I’m pretty sure there is more than one half empty Sonic cup sitting on my bathroom cabinet… don’t ask.  I can’t even figure out how they got there.  There are not one, not two, but three suitcases sitting in the dining room that are half unpacked… or half packed depending on how you look at it.  There are shoes in the living room, in my office, in the bathroom, in my bedroom, on the treadmill… and there’s a pair of boots sitting downstairs by the front door that someone borrowed about three months ago.  I’ve been in and out that door a hundred times since then, and still they sit there waiting patiently to be returned to their rightful home… the closet.  Trash is picked up at the curb right outside my apartment every Tuesday and Friday, but all of the trashcans are full.  My apartment is so messy that I called the cleaning lady and postponed my last cleaning because I didn’t want her to see it like this.  That’s bad when you feel like you need to clean before the cleaning lady can come clean.  It’s like a nasty downward spiral.  It starts getting messy because I’m so busy traveling that I don’t have time to do anything but unpack, repack, and leave again.  Then, when I do have time to do something about it, I just don’t care anymore.  Now it’s at a critical stage.  It’s at the “so dirty it’s making me unhappy” stage.  It rarely reaches this point, and I’ve discovered that this stage often times coincides with my mood about things other than the cleanliness of my humble abode.  Life has gotten kind of messy and confusing, and the more messy and confusing it gets the messier my apartment gets.  I found my stapler in the refrigerator yesterday.  That’s bad.  Really bad.  90% of the time, my apartment is adorable, CLEAN, and organized as efficiently as only someone as OCD as myself could achieve.  The other 10% of the time it looks like a war zone.  When my life gets messy I shut down.  I don’t do laundry.  I don’t do dishes.  I don’t cook.  I obviously don’t clean.  I just sit around in the midst of the chaos and feel bad about the fact my messy life and my messy apartment aren’t living up to my expectations.  This is usually the point where my sister stages an intervention.  She comes to town, we clean, I cry, and then we move on like it never happened.  I’m trying a new approach this time.  I’m going to clean on my own today… sans intervention! At the very least, it will be one less thing to sit around worrying and feeling bad about.  Wish me luck!