Having a clean and tidy house is really important to me. It appeases my OCD and it’s satisfying, and it makes me happy to be able to look around me and admire the NICENESS and cleanliness of my own home. Even when I was a kid, I liked tidying up the mess my room often became, just for the satisfaction of it. I liked rearranging my room as well, because every time I did, it became NEW and was satisfying for a long time.
One of the things that I used to cajole my siblings into doing when we were young was playing brownies: cleaning house and tidying up (not just in our rooms) when our parents were either out or otherwise occupied, in the belief that they wouldn’t know it was us that had done it.
Anders just hung two Klippan ceramic hanging pots for me in the kitchen windows and I went to the plant nursery and bought some pretty-leafed plants to put in them and now the whole kitchen is new again as well!
AND to boot, I spent most of the day thoroughly spring-cleaning (summer-cleaning, technically). I had “DUST EVERYTHING” on my vacation to-do list, and that is exactly what I did. I dusted EVERY SINGLE OBJECT in the house, and damn girl, you have a LOT of objects. I wiped every surface clean: every shelf, all the books, windowsills, furniture. I windexed all the glass surfaces. And I vacuumed up the resulting dust as well. I can’t remember the last time I wiped down the tops of all the bookcases in the house, but they’re clean now!
The day before yesterday, I took down most of the curtains in all the rooms of the house and washed them. Then I ironed them half-wet and hung them to dry and then Anders and I put them all back up. It’s probably been 10 years at the least since they were last washed (usch, shameful) and they were SO dusty and spidery-webby on the backsides. I HAVE vacuummed them on occasion, or at least swiped at them with the vacuum but it was way past time to really wash them.
Now my entire house feels new because it’s so clean and I keep sitting on the sofa and looking about me with a very happy sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. I did manage to break a little glass vase while I was dusting…SO TYPICAL. But had another little vase that will work for now for the glass spray of lily-of-the-valley that went with the one that broke. And something to keep an eye out for now when thrifting (tiny glass vase, no more than 2″ high, please).
I still have a week of sick leave/vacation, and I’ve pretty much powered through everything that was on my to-do list. Good thing next week is booked up with appointments and events! Otherwise, I don’t know what I would do with myself, haha!
Mood: productive
Music: Emily Vaughn, Maryon King—Maniac
Oof. This makes me tired just reading. Although I completely get it. I play brownie all the time in this house. If I die suddenly all sorts of bad things will happen with germs😂
It made me tired, too, haha. I took an hour-long nap at the end of it all. And I took a LOT of breaks, some of them long ones, in between the rooms as I was doing them. And it wasn’t strenuous, at all (apart from getting up on the ladders to get the tops of the bookcases with a vacuum and dustcloth in hand.