Deadlines enable housework… don’t they?

Posted on October 24, 2007 in Personal thoughts by DM

It is impossible to keep my house clean. We live next to one of this city’s few remaining unpaved roads, which means an incredible amount of dust makes its way into our house through open doors and windows. We also own a large dog who daily sheds enough hair to cover another dog. We also are, quite frankly, pack rats. Which is too bad because I hate clutter. So, because of the perpetual nature of the dust and dog hair, and because I was once roundly chastised for accidentally throwing away my husband’s wallet along with the junk mail and the title to the car, I’m reluctant to take on a major cleaning project without direct supervision and assistance from the rest of my family. (Of course, it’s much easier to clean when they’re not ~~in the way~~ home, which makes it kind of a Catch-22.) What this means is that instead of actually cleaning, we normally just “tidy up”: sweep the kitchen, vaccuum the living room, scoop the cat litter, and sort/toss junk mail.

Does this make me a bad person? Of course not: we don’t live in filth (though we certainly live in clutter… just ask my neighbor what she was looking for in the garage the other day. She’ll tell you, “a flat surface on which to set my beer,” and then she’ll tell you she never found one!); we don’t have dirty dishes piled anywhere but in the sink. What this does make me, however, is the type of person who works well on deadlines - because really, outside of our seasonal “deep cleaning days,” only the threat of visitors (those we still clean for) causes me to tackle more than a “tidying up.” And after reading Drew’s post about the plus side of looming deadlines, I feel okay about that.

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