Spring Cleaning Part I: An Exercise in Futility

The cherry blossoms are past their peak. The coats have been stowed away. And the Easter Bunny is hopping into town. Spring has arrived. In spirit of the season, and because I have been giving this topic a lot of thought lately, I've decided to do a series on Spring cleaning. Supposedly, this series will have 5 parts...but I'm famous for unfinished projects, so I'll just be happy if this really is a "series" and not just one announcement post!

Cleaning has never been a favorite past-time of mine. Ask my mother. I grew up in a house that I remember being almost invariably immaculate. Except my room, of course. I don't remember my mother spending inordinate amounts of time cleaning, but considering she had six kids, I probably just wasn't paying attention. But as an adult, I've studied my mom a little closer. She never stops cleaning. When she comes to visit, she walks around with a wet rag in her hand wiping surfaces. I can always expect my stove to be sparkling when she leaves. I've tried to imitate her, but I think I'm a hopeless case.

I believe my mom is naturally neat; she definitely didn't learn it from her mother. (I love you Grandma! But you gotta admit, cleaning is not your forte!) I, however, am naturally disheveled. If you've ever heard me relate a story orally, you know that even my thought patterns are naturally garbled. While this has been a source of mild annoyance to myself throughout life, it never bothered me enough to put serious effort into reforming. Then I got married, had babies, and became a stay-at-home mom.

Suddenly, a good portion of my job description included cleaning and keeping things organized and running well. With one baby, I could still fake my way clean. But with two, I drowned in mess. In the fall of 2007 I began serious work on changing myself in this area. By looking at my house, you'd never know it.

This focus on organizational improvement was sparked by two factors. The first was a general feeling of disorder and lack of control after having my second child so close to my first. The second was a talk given by an LDS church leader Julie Beck. entitled "Mothers Who Know." I know, those of you familiar with the talk - I can already hear your collective groan. For those of you who aren't: This talk was given by the church's women's group general president and talked about the qualities a mother who has a testimony of Jesus Christ should exhibit. The inclusion of orderliness as a quality sparked quite a bit of controversy among women and overshadowed the main point of the talk which was that mothers should not let anything take priority over or distract them raising their children righteously. I recognized that I was lacking in that area, and that improvement would benefit my family and I decided to start making a concerted effort to change.

This endeavor has been one of the most challenging and frustrating of my life. While I'm OK at cleaning, I really, really suck at keeping it clean and I suck even more at getting things organized.

I've identified specific tendencies that contribute to my disability. I'm a pack-rat, for instance. My basement isn't enough to tempt Oprah to spotlight it for a voyeuristic public, but it is full of things I'll probably never use. Darkroom equipment. A fondue pot. Awful wedding gifts. I'm also highly distractable. This translates into random objects being placed randomly and thoughtlessly around the house. A diaper on the kitchen table. The TV remote on the clothes dryer. I even once filled a glass with a beverage and then returned the same glass to the cupboard. It took me twenty minutes to figure out where my milk was.

I have made strides. I've donate pounds upon pounds of unneeded items. I've made lists to keep me focused. I've tried to cut down on the attempts at multi-tasking, following one task at a time to completion. I'm not even close though. Change hurts.

And, ironically, over the past year and a half, I have found that I have often allowed developing a talent that is intended to bless my children distract me from the greater needs of my children. I remember once telling a friend when my first child was still an infant, "I could have a cleaner house, but I like playing with my daughter more." I still feel that way, but somehow I have a problem living true to those feelings. Pressure to present a face to the world, my husband's dissatisfaction with the house, and my own stress of unrealized goals tend to take precedence. I guess I have created a new fault that now needs attention.