An Interesting Revelation

Ah May. Is it May already? Are we ALREADY halfway through May? Between my son's 1st birthday, Mother's Day, and my birthday, May is a crazy busy month for us. Heck, the entire summer is super busy for us.

It being May, I've noticed that a lot of grocery stores and other retailers are starting to advertise Spring Cleaning! events. I've had my spring cleaning done for a few weeks now since I started in January.

Throughout this years spring cleaning season (January-April for me), I discovered something interesting about myself:

I feel like I don't deserve a clean house.

Its stupid, I know. But I noticed that whenever my kitchen is spotless, or there aren't a bazillion toys on the floor because I made the kids cleanup before bedtime, I have this weird sense that something is wrong because my house isn't a mess.

It doesn't make any sense, because I totally deserve to have a clean house. And I am 100% capable of having a clean house with minimal work, but for some reason, my mind tells me its wrong. Maybe its because I was never able to keep my room clean as a kid. Maybe its because I've never been a good housekeeper. Maybe I feel like because I have two kids, that I should be constantly doing housework, and if I'm not, something is wrong.

Who knows.

I've come up with a cleaning schedule that allows me to do one room a day. If I stay on top of it, my daily housework is less than an hour every day. And my house gets a full cleaning every week. I could also use some more sleep. I really go to bed much later than I should, which results in my day getting started much later than I like. I've tried staying accountable to a good friend (who is also a SAHM with 2 kids), but I find that if I DON'T get my cleaning done, that I feel even worse about myself which just contributes to the problem.

Here's the thing though, when my house is clean, things are SO much smoother around here. My daily housework takes me 30 minutes tops and then the rest of my day is free. It takes so much stress off of me and my kids. I'm not constantly worrying about what Aaron is gonna find and put in his mouth. I have more time to play with Penelope. I don't worry about where Luna is sneaking off to to devour dirty underwear or secretly pee somewhere. Cooking dinner is so much less of a problem because everything is clean and put away and I don't have to wonder where is that measuring spoon?

So I work really hard and go through a marathon cleaning day week and get my house spotless and then I can finally relax right? Nope. That's when the sabotage happens. My mind starts telling me things like "This is so not you. You're not one of these 'house is always clean' sorta people. You couldn't even keep a 2 bedroom apartment clean. How are you supposed to keep your house clean? And look at your BASEMENT! You don't really clean. All you do is shuffle things around so they LOOK clean, but you know the truth!..." and so on.

So I stop doing my daily housework. And the whole thing falls apart and it looks like a tornado has ripped through. Then I start feeling guilty about having a messy house. "Look at you. You can't even keep your house clean. You can't even stay on top of your dishes for one lousy day. And now you're SO TIRED that you can't even get off the couch to do any work" And so on and so forth. So I do a marathon cleaning, get the place spotless, and then the cycle starts all over again.

It's quite a cruel cycle.

And I don't know how to stop it.

All I can do is keep trying.