Cleaning

I hated to clean. I hated all the time and effort that I put into cleaning and for it to be quickly ruined. Just because I hated it didn't mean I didn't do it. I was just resentful along the way. I hated how when the laundry was done, there were new clothes in the dirty laundry, how when the dishes were clean someone ate and it needed to be done again, it was a never ending process. Cleaning became one of those things that I felt was not immediate. Our space was livable but I discovered that if I just closed our bedroom door then all the mess could be hidden.

I liked having guests over for any reason. We often hosted game nights in our home and had people over for dinner. I like to put my best foot forward and therefore had to show a clean home. We devised a quick and easy method of cleaning. We called it the 10 second tidy. It was the concept of for 10 minutes we will do this and then move on to the next task for 10 minutes and so on and so forth till the home was clean. It was successful but only when there was a pending visit. I started inviting people over just to have a reason to clean the house.

It was a great system, as long as we knew we were to have visitors. It was that occasional drop in from a friend that would be my demise. If anyone saw how unclean  my house actually was then they might know that I was not perfect.