The Week I Didn't Clean

Do you remember the Y2K scare? There were some folks who were genuinely concerned that the world would end at midnight on December 31. It happened again with the whole Mayan Calendar scare a couple years ago. And it happened at my house last week…

Let me explain.

I’m a bit of a clean freak. I’m not ashamed of that fact. I like my house to be clean. To avoid spending hours cleaning on the weekends, I wrote up a cleaning schedule that split our household cleaning tasks up across each day of the week. That has helped a lot. But I’ve been feeling rather frustrated lately. Frustrated that I can’t keep up. Frustrated that I have too much to do. Frustrated that I have no energy to do any of it. And not just cleaning, but all daily tasks in general. I’ve felt behind and unmotivated.

For those of you that have been following this blog from the beginning (thank you!), you may have noticed I started out posting three times per week. A couple months back, I dropped it down to two. Trying to get three good posts out every week while working full-time and keeping up with all my other duties was too much. I felt such a huge sense of relief when I allowed myself to drop down to two. But then about a month ago, two felt like too many. So I decided to drop it down to one good quality post each week, at least through the summer. That decision didn’t bring much of a relief; I felt guilty.

Even with that guilt-ridden decision, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had to give. I had the realization that I am busy because I am willing to be busy and I put a lot of pressure on myself to accomplish a lot of busy-ness every week. But accomplishing all of those things was leaving me feeling empty, frustrated, tired, and kinda hopeless – wondering, what’s the point of all of this?

So I challenged myself. For one week, I was going to take a break from blog writing, and a break from cleaning. (Cue dramatic music here). 

I worried that by Saturday, the world might end. I wanted to rest and relax, spend some quality time with my Mister, and really, just prove to myself that I could go an entire week without cleaning. I went and got my haircut one evening. I did some online work to make some extra income in hopes of buying a shiny new camera lens I have my eye on. I did spend some extra time with my Mister. And, most importantly, I rested. I’m happy to report that the world did not end. The house did not fall apart. No one got sick. The township did not show up to condemn the dwelling. Life went on.

The following week, I got back on the cleaning schedule but with a different perspective. I feel less pressured to get EVERYTHING done EVERY week. I have a realization of what rest feels like and I like it. I took a look at how I spend my time every week. Once I account for working, sleeping, meal prep and eating, exercising, blogging, personal hygiene, and cleaning, I’m left with only 2% of my week free to do what I want. That’s not very much time and that’s not how I want to live my life.

Our time here is short. We need to enjoy it. We need to spend time with the people we love and we need to spend time doing what we love. Yes, there are jobs and chores and obligations. But we have to free ourselves a bit to have fun, to relax, to rest. 

If you’re a clean freak like me, I challenge you to take a week to relax. And, if you’re feeling overwhelmed with your daily and weekly duties, take a look at your schedule and see which areas you may be too hard on yourself about. To keep going strong, sometimes we need to take a step back.

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