Tag: cleaning

Daily Prompt: The Odd Couple

Does a messy home (or office) make you anxious and cranky, or is cleaning something you just do before company comes over?

Today’s Daily Prompt question is interesting because for me there doesn’t seem to be a clear-cut answer.

When it comes to working out of the house I am anxious and cranky about a messy desk/office.  Everything has its place.  Unfortunately I have worked in places where it’s hard to find a place for everything because of space, location or lack of equipment/supplies.  I am completely ashamed to say that I have actually driven back to my office at night or gone in on a weekend just because I left a mess behind.  I have no idea if that makes me obsessive, a good employee or just plain stupid but I’ve done it.

As far as my house is concerned I would have to say I fall somewhere in the middle.  If I’m going to have people over and I have ample notice, I will be pretty anxious about making sure the house is clean.  I lived by myself for a few years so my obsessiveness about cleanliness in those years would ebb and flow.  For a few days I would be a slob.  Now, when I say slob I mean not doing the dishes, not putting my clothes away or not sweeping the floor.  I don’t mean leaving rotting food lying around or garbage everywhere.  I want to be sure to be specific here.

I also have to admit there have been times when company was coming that I did the “fake clean”.  You know what I’m talking about, I know you’ve done it too, don’t deny it.  Dirty dishes in the oven, clothes shoved in a closet or piles of stuff moved to a closet or drawer.  Yes, this is very deceiving because people think you have a clean house all the time but it’s better than them thinking the alternative in my mind.

Now that I have a roommate I’m a bit more obsessive at home, I may go a couple of days without doing dishes, vacuuming, etc. but I make sure to keep a pretty clean house so she doesn’t think I’m a slob.  I still throw my dirty clothes down the basement steps but I attempt to make them in a basket instead of leaving them on the floor at the bottom. I still may not put my clothes away but at least they’re in my closet in a basket instead of in the living room in a basket.  Shhhh, don’t tell anyone that my closet isn’t clean.

I also have to say that I am very obsessive about my house before I leave for a few days.  I don’t like coming home to a mess and God forbid something happened to me, I don’t want people coming over to find a mess!  They certainly don’t need to come in to find a science experiment in the fridge, a messy bathroom or a pile of dirty laundry.

I’m not going to be one of those people who say “oh, my house is clean all the time” or “no one cleans like I do” because that’s just not true.  I know a few of those people and I’ve discovered those who brag the most about being obsessively clean really aren’t that way.

Thinking about all this just prompted me to make a list for tomorrow.  Vacuum, laundry, kitchen and bathroom floors and clean sheet night.  Ohhh, looking forward to going to bed tomorrow night already!  Yes, it’s true, clean sheet night is really that exciting to me.

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Sleepless in Wisconsin XIV

I really have no idea if that’s the roman numeral for 14 or not but tonight I don’t care.  I am so tired of this not sleeping thing I could throw up.  I’ve had another run of bad sleeping the last couple of weeks but have been trying to ignore it……as we already know, that doesn’t work.

For a few days I had heartburn to the point of being on the verge of throwing up which I know was part of the problem.  I would imagine some of you are thinking…..’hey chubby, stop eating’, but heartburn has never been a problem for me.  I can eat the rear end out of a rhino and things are fine…..normally.  That’s why this has been so upsetting to me, although I haven’t been eating rhino lately I haven’t been eating much of anything because of the burn.

I visited the chiropractor today for other issues and when he had me lay down on the torture table he asked “suffering from heartburn are ya?” without even touching me.  He freaks me out like that now and then.  When I told him I did he took his index finger, poked me near my left shoulder blade and said “I bet it hurts right here”.  Pretty sure my scream and jerk were enough of an answer.  He adjusted me and miraculously I haven’t had heartburn since.  I forget about him for things like that and wish I didn’t because the 8 rolls of tums sure didn’t help.

While I’m ranting I may as well share that not only am I struggling with heartburn, I feel as though I have been drug behind a snowplow by my arms.  A friend and I got ourselves into a cleaning project that was more than we could have imagined.  At this very moment I would rather be kidnapped by an unknown Amazon tribe and tortured for days than ever wash walls again.  I was already suffering from some unknown issue with my elbows (thus the chiropractor and the not sleeping tonight) and I’m pretty certain the cleaning made it worse.  The chiro isn’t very impressed with me but he’s used to it.

The person we’re doing the cleaning for also has a sleeping problem so we’ve been swapping stories of insomnia.  The difference between us is he has money so infomercials are actually useful to him.   I noticed several purchases from crappy late night TV in his apartment.  I thought about leaving a note for him with the things I think I could use but knowing him he’d actually purchase them for me.

Tonight I’m watching a Finding Bigfoot marathon instead of infomercials and I can’t decide which is actually worse.  The episode on now is in Idaho.  Tomorrow when I speak to Idaho (the guy) I will have to see if he’s interested in doing a little squatch hunting the next time I’m there.  Maybe we’ll film our adventure and push these four yayhoos from the show and take over.  I bet we could be entertaining.  To end the show they said “Idaho is part of the pathway from the Rockies to Canada for the sasquatch”.  The squatch are migrating north to Canada??  What does Canada have to offer that we don’t?  How do we know this for sure?  Maybe the Canadians aren’t actually trying to find bigfoot so they’re going there to be left alone………interesting concept.  Maybe our show could center around keeping the squatch here in the states.

If there was anything else on I would turn the channel but there’s not.   What the hell do I pay $85 a month for if I can’t watch anything better than this in the middle of the night?  I’ll call the cable company tomorrow and ask them…..wait…..no, I won’t. I’m pretty sure they won the “Worst Customer Service on the Planet” award last month.

Those were some super random writings tonight, I think it’s time to find something else to do like the dishes or laundry or something.   I’m not even making much sense to myself……and that’s bad.