i’m like that commercial

It was on a few years ago, and I’ve looked for it via YouTube but no luck- I can’t find it. Anyway, in this commercial, the mom is totally rocking out to her old school music while she’s cleaning, and her ultra-cool goth daughter just stares at her- remember that one? Yeah, that was totally me yesterday. I spent the day rocking out to my nineties music (Pearl Jam, Cher, Billy Idol, B52’s and others) while I cleaned my house. Which is why I didn’t blog all day. I was busy cleaning.

Let me tell you about my house. It’s not dirty, like, DIRTY, but it’s cluttered. There are seven people who live here, and it’s not a large space, and seven people generate a lot of crap stuff. And both my husband and I are avid readers, which translates to me being a book collector, and we easily have a thousand books in this house. Not to mention that my offspring are all aspiring artists, love crafts, toys, and they’re all readers as well, AND they’ve all inherited my “must hang onto this lest I might need it someday in the future” gene… so yeah. We have a lot of crap. Stuff. We have a lot of STUFF.

On top of that, my mom, bless her, was not the best housekeeper herself and frankly, I really didn’t “get” how to keep a tidy house. Clean, yes… but tidy? Yeah, not so much. So I haven’t had the very best example of HOW. Until recently.

I got to spend a week with my best friend Shanna, who lives in Texas, and describes herself as a “lazy perfectionist”. Ok, people, let me be the first to tell you that this woman is NOT in the slightest stretch of the word ,“lazy”. And perfectionist? Not so much. She likes things neat and tidy, abhors clutter, and has found a way to have her house the way she likes it, but she doesn’t smack me as a perfectionist so much as someone who runs her household like a well-oiled machine. In other words, she has a system, and the system actually works. Wanna know what it is?

It’s maintenance, to put it simply. It’s getting rid of stuff, cleaning, and maintaining it. So the initial work is hard- I did my whole kitchen, cleaning and organizing everything, from the fridge to cupboards to the drawers. Since I did it, though, my kitchen has been lovely. It’s clean all the time. And clean up after making meals is a snap. A snap, I tell you!

So after the Great Kitchen Experiment was met with such success, I moved onto the rest of my house. Yesterday I did my living room and dining area. Took me two and a half hours of hard, busting my ass work, but I was moving furniture and all kinds of craziness was happening there. Not to mention that I was gettin’ down while I was gettin’ clean. I mean, we’re talking about full on dancing with my mop and everything. It’s seriously the only time in my life that I’ve cleaned and had a great time doing it.

No, really, I had a really good time cleaning. Maybe that’s the key…? Instead of hating it, I should find ways to do it so that I’m having fun…? Just, you know, don’t tell my kids. Because if they knew that I was having a good time, that would totally kill my “I work so hard because I love you, not because I love cleaning” thing I’m currently milking. I get so mileage out of that, lemme tell ya. So mums the word on that one, m’kay?

Let’s see how the rest of this week goes, see how well I keep it up. Results later!

See ya!