Saturday, November 14, 2009

Random

I've figured out why I hate cleaning the house so much. It's not the dirt or the toilets; it the random project generated by each attempt to clean something. This morning, I was throwing clothes in the dryer when I noticed that a plastic bag was sucked into the filter. I don't want to risk a fire, so I get out the screw driver and take apart the lint filter to dig it out. All of the sudden a five minute job has morphed into a thirty minute one. This type of thing is constant. I've seen it referred to as "stream of consciousness cleaning" and parodied in a If You Give A Mouse a Cookie type of email, so I know that I am not alone. Do all women clean this way? Am I the only one who has started to put towels in the linen closet only to be shaken back to reality by my husband yelling "What the heck are you doing up there?" Well, I saw the old medicine that I keep at the top of the closet and decide to clear out the old pill bottles. Studies have shown that multitasking is inefficient, yet I can't help myself.

Rob's method is to start a project, get almost finished, get pissed off, and leave it for weeks, months, years.

We are going to combine our styles and try to go against type by redoing the dining room. We are going to stick to it from start to finish. We'll paint, buy furniture, arrange furniture, and install lighting. All without stopping or moving onto something else. Do you know how hard it is to keep painting when the closets are calling to be reorganized and the laundry wants to be folded.

This will be a challenge and we are up to it! I'll let you know how it goes when we finish it in a year.

1 comment:

Betsy said...

Oh my goodness. I have that affliction in such a major way. I can't even remember where I started half the time when I'm cleaning. I'll wander through the house and find a sponge lying on the coffee table, where I stopped on the way to clean the bathroom, and I somehow switched to sorting through my kids art projects, then ended up straightening up the bookshelf, then I was reading a book I've already read but love........... etc, etc. etc.