A lot of times, I've discovered that when I get unhappy with my house, it's because I'm feeling weighed down. When I've let things drag on and just continue to be messy and cluttered. When this happens, I feel myself being bummed out and unmotivated because of all of my stuff. This begins a vicious cycle of my productivity slowing down until I am just barely doing what I need to get by. This is definitely not a good cycle to get drawn into and after I get to this point I am anxious to clean up and sometimes clean out something.
I don't know if it's because I'm a woman and I have these mothering tendencies or feel the need to take care of everything myself, but when my house is a total mess, I just feel like I can't do anything until I've taken care of the messy parts. Welllllll when my house is full of stuff that is just strewn everywhere it is kind of hard to do what I really want to do. I have decided that the way to beat this cycle is by taking baby steps to build a good routine.
When I am at work, I clean off my desk at the end o the day. I usually make a list of what needs to be done for the next day and I put up my unfinished work in a tray so I can pick back up where I am the following day. It makes a difference in my productivity coming into the office the next day when my desk is all clean versus when it is covered in papers and work. Plus it looks so much better than when it is covered in paperwork.
So...baby steps. I've been (trying) to really do this in my kitchen daily. But it is so much easier to let the dishes continue to pile up and I know I am guilty of letting the pots "soak" overnight. My mother always, always cleaned the kitchen every night. This was not something that stuck with m and I really wish it had. So I try to do this, but it doesn't always happen.
One thing that I have successfully done is keeping my bathroom counter straight! Because I use the bathroom ever day to fix my hair and make up, it is easy to just leave it all out on the counter. It is especially easy since I basically live by myself for half the year and rarely have people over. So yeah, I consider it an accomplishment that I have put all my makeup and hair dryer in the bathroom closet daily. Just please. No one look in the closet!
By doing just these small things where I pick up after myself when I'm done, I can feel my spirit lifting up and my heart being lighter when I look around my house. It's still a little hard. Like, my dining table chairs are still on top of the table from when I ran my roomba. And the clean towels are still in the dryer. But that's why they're called baby steps. :)
