I came home tonight and opened the refrigerator door, and I so wanted to grab a damp cloth and wipe every clear shelf and container. I walked into my room, and saw tiny particles of dust on my dresser and nightstand and I thought to myself, "Wow, I really need to get the wood polish and remove all these dust bunnies." I saw the row of flip flops that I usually place under my dresser for when I just need to "slip n' go" and I wanted to remove them all from their usual spot. I placed a towel in the laundry room and I wanted to scavenge through the hamper and put a load to wash. Mind you these observations all came to me within a half hour's time! The aliens must be taking over because this is not my usual thought pattern.
However, when I was a very young girl, I was the ultimate cleanfreak and it was a habit that I may have lost friends over. I would invite my friends over and before they would arrive, I'd make sure my room was cleaner than a hospital sterilization room. My bed was neatly made, my clothes were put away, my dresser mirror was fingerprint-less, not one dust particle was living or breathing in my room, and absolutely not one thing was out of place. But when 2 or 3 of my ten year old friends came over to hang out in my room, a sudden state of anxiety would blanket over me. I panicked at the sight of one of them sitting on my bed because my sheets would wrinkle. I held my breath when I saw them reaching for my hairbrush. I distracted anyone who would grab for my collection of encyclopedia books because I knew they were all in order. Because of this insane debaucle, my friends soon found "other places to hang out". I look back on all this now and think, Dang, what a freakazoid (meaning ME, not my friends)! I dropped the habit as I got into my early twenties! Yeah who has time to clean when you're in your twenties, right? I can proudly say the habit has yet to return even in my thirties, yay!...until.....Tonight! NOoooo! THE FORMER CLEANFREAKAZOID RETURNS!!!
So I got to thinking, why do people clean so much? And what makes them stop cleaning??
I have a few friends who spend a majority of their days off cleaning their entire house. To some it's an outlet for stress, cleaning can be mentally therapeutic and it's a way to gain control of their lives. It is also something many people worry over if they were to leave their home untidy. We all know it's something that has to be done, we all have different reasons and different paces.
Tonight I visited my cousin whose father (who resided with her) passed away last night. Prior to her father's passing, she was undergoing a ton of stress, like most people are who are hit hard by the economy, she had to be out of her home by LAST Friday and she was still packing and now on top of that has to deal with her father's funeral. As I walked into her home tonight, I pictured someone taking her house and cupping it in their hands, shaking it like a pair of dice, and then placing it back down on the lot again. Everything was everywhere. So I got to chatting with her and she explained to me something that made sense, her mind was so jumbled that she couldn't even think to clean. She may have been there physically but her mind wasn't. She said to me, "How my house looks, is how my mind feels. How can I clean it when I'm too stressed out?" My eyes and my mind were opened at that point. My cousin was right smack in the middle of a transformation and transitiong period. Well maybe she had just started the phase. Who knows? But at one point, she stopped cleaning because it was no longer serving its therapeutic purposes. I stopped being the freakazoid because I became too obsessive. It's when things become "too much" or "not at all" that we have to step back and make a change. But I do know this, that once all the dust settles, she and I will grab that Windex bottle and Magic Eraser and get to scrubbing again.
p.s. THE CLEANFREAKAZOID will not be making it's return! I am just gaining control of my life again. :)
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