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Engage White Tornado...
Dec. 30th, 2010 02:43 pmCleaning house is always kind of weird for me.
I've finally come to grips with all the things that converged to create the messiest child ever. I understand now that I was taught to "put that away when you're finished with it", but not how to tell when I was finished with it. "Why are these toys still out?" I wasn't finished playing with them. And I wasn't done with that craft project, and I also wasn't done getting dressed.
What?
I also understand that while I was being taught, "A place for everything and everything in its' place", I was living with a Magpie (Oooh! Shiny! Gotta catch 'em all!) and a Packrat (Don't throw that away, it could be useful someday!) and that I was being given more toys/clothes/crafts than I had places for them to go, without a viable way for any of the older stuff to go away. (Heck, my mother STILL has a suitcase-full of her old toys. She sure wasn't going to make ME throw any of mine away...) Some of the toys from my single-digit years were donated to pre-schools and daycare facilities, but most of the toys I had from about 8 years old on are *still in my possession today.*
Add to this my complete inability to commit to a chore unless there was some kind of role-play involved, which was easy when I was little and Mom could play both Wicked Stepmother and Fairy Godmother in a carrot-and-stick kind of motivation system.
Which brings us to the other reason why I can't ever seem to get simple mundane things done (though I can perform magic and create the most amazing things): I have always had a "problem with motivation".
Why do you think I want to host stuff all the time? It keeps me somewhat honest.
But here's another reason why cleaning (which is a long, boring, and complicated chore) and I don't get along in my own house: I'm really easily distracted. For example, I'm typing this post.
For another example, I found my answering machine(s) and hooked one up so that if you call my land-line, and no one is here to answer the phone, *you can now leave a message for us!*
It's a big accomplishment! It's something I meant to do for MONTHS now, ever since I initially found the answering machines. But did I stop playing with the internet or my dolls to do it? No.
I had to wait until there was a bigger chore with a scarier deadline to be completely immersed in before I could go do this simple thing.
LOL.
Wanna see me accomplish something amazing? MAKE me do something else. The something else will NOT get done. The other stuff I do will knock your socks off.
I'm a contrary little cuss, ain't I? And I'm brilliant at cleaning OTHER PEOPLE'S space. Seriously, nothing to distract me there. I can get the grubby corners clean enough to eat off of. I can do days worth of dishes, laundry, and even clean the windows. I was a good cleaning person, I really was. Why? Because YOUR stuff is unlikely to distract me by discovering unfinished business or shinier objects.
Oh, yeah. One more thing:
When you come over tonight, coo over the house, or at least say something like, "Great job!" "You worked hard, didn't you?" or "Wow, you have a beautiful home!"
Do not, under any circumstances make back-handed remarks like, "Oh, yeah, it looks way better than the hack job you did for Christmas" or "Well, it looks LESS like a storage facility, so good job." Or even, "Oh, we know that you live in filth and squalor, and we accepted it years ago. Oh, look, a clean spot..."
Remarks such as these are incredibly counter-productive and require an awful lot of my wrangling with my inner demons. Be kind and don't go there if you actually LIKE me.
I've finally come to grips with all the things that converged to create the messiest child ever. I understand now that I was taught to "put that away when you're finished with it", but not how to tell when I was finished with it. "Why are these toys still out?" I wasn't finished playing with them. And I wasn't done with that craft project, and I also wasn't done getting dressed.
What?
I also understand that while I was being taught, "A place for everything and everything in its' place", I was living with a Magpie (Oooh! Shiny! Gotta catch 'em all!) and a Packrat (Don't throw that away, it could be useful someday!) and that I was being given more toys/clothes/crafts than I had places for them to go, without a viable way for any of the older stuff to go away. (Heck, my mother STILL has a suitcase-full of her old toys. She sure wasn't going to make ME throw any of mine away...) Some of the toys from my single-digit years were donated to pre-schools and daycare facilities, but most of the toys I had from about 8 years old on are *still in my possession today.*
Add to this my complete inability to commit to a chore unless there was some kind of role-play involved, which was easy when I was little and Mom could play both Wicked Stepmother and Fairy Godmother in a carrot-and-stick kind of motivation system.
Which brings us to the other reason why I can't ever seem to get simple mundane things done (though I can perform magic and create the most amazing things): I have always had a "problem with motivation".
Why do you think I want to host stuff all the time? It keeps me somewhat honest.
But here's another reason why cleaning (which is a long, boring, and complicated chore) and I don't get along in my own house: I'm really easily distracted. For example, I'm typing this post.
For another example, I found my answering machine(s) and hooked one up so that if you call my land-line, and no one is here to answer the phone, *you can now leave a message for us!*
It's a big accomplishment! It's something I meant to do for MONTHS now, ever since I initially found the answering machines. But did I stop playing with the internet or my dolls to do it? No.
I had to wait until there was a bigger chore with a scarier deadline to be completely immersed in before I could go do this simple thing.
LOL.
Wanna see me accomplish something amazing? MAKE me do something else. The something else will NOT get done. The other stuff I do will knock your socks off.
I'm a contrary little cuss, ain't I? And I'm brilliant at cleaning OTHER PEOPLE'S space. Seriously, nothing to distract me there. I can get the grubby corners clean enough to eat off of. I can do days worth of dishes, laundry, and even clean the windows. I was a good cleaning person, I really was. Why? Because YOUR stuff is unlikely to distract me by discovering unfinished business or shinier objects.
Oh, yeah. One more thing:
When you come over tonight, coo over the house, or at least say something like, "Great job!" "You worked hard, didn't you?" or "Wow, you have a beautiful home!"
Do not, under any circumstances make back-handed remarks like, "Oh, yeah, it looks way better than the hack job you did for Christmas" or "Well, it looks LESS like a storage facility, so good job." Or even, "Oh, we know that you live in filth and squalor, and we accepted it years ago. Oh, look, a clean spot..."
Remarks such as these are incredibly counter-productive and require an awful lot of my wrangling with my inner demons. Be kind and don't go there if you actually LIKE me.
