Saying Goodbye To My Mess

It was so bad. I didn’t know where to start. It was overwhelming, frustrating and depressing. It felt like a self inflicted punishment that I desperately wanted to escape. But this is what I set out to do, I wanted my life back. I wanted a clean apartment. So I put on my music and started picking up items off the floor. It felt like I was doing something, I was moving right along and after 30 minutes of “cleaning” I discovered that I was just aimlessly moving items around the room. I needed a plan.

My world of mess was crashing down on me all at once.

“How could you let it get like this?”

“Why is everything on the floor?”

“What kind of person lives like this?”

I pushed through the shame with my tail in between my legs. I knew I needed to simplify the project. I started with just getting rid of all the garbage. I grabbed a bag and  starting picking up all the trash of old junk mail flyers with expired coupons attached,  tags cut off from new shirts I bought when I ran out of clean clothes and candy wrappers from the days I felt I “deserved” a snack. It was my shame tour. All my past secrets were now being dug up and rediscovered from beneath the depths of my clothes and shoes.

Once all the actual garbage was gone I was left with just the clothing clutter. I sorted the dirty clothes from the haven’t worn yet stuff and assumed that anything that smelled good could also be put back in my dresser.

Folding was boring and again, felt like a punishment. But I eventually finished with only 8 unmatched socks.

Shoes were paired back with their rightful partners. I made my bed and fluffed the pillows on the couch. Everything seemed to be coming along, that was until I walked into the kitchen and saw the dishes.

Uhg, the never ending sink of dishes. I don’t have a dishwasher so the dishes get done when I find the energy to do them. Although, I never seem to find enough energy to do the dishes after all the prepping, cooking, and eating of all my meals. I always leave it for “later”. By the end of the week all my “later” dishes have piled up to the ceiling creating a very real NOW problem. If folding laundry is like a punishment, then hand washing old dirty dishes is absolute complete unbearable torture. Which could be why they always pile up. I pressed through the hell of everything horrible about washing dishes and got water everywhere. Eventually after about a half hour, they were all done. I  even went the extra mile and put them all back in the cabinets. Yay me.

The bathroom was one of the easier places to clean up. It’s the one room that I apparently keep decent. Yay me again.

Now  that every room has been decluttered, I could finally see clearly.  My last step was giving every room a good wash down with windex, bleach, all pourpose cleaner and a hundred paper towels.

It took almost a full day to get my apartment back to it’s normal state. As I proudly stood back and looked over my land, I felt accomplished. “This will be the last time” I thought to myself. I can no longer afford to live in shame. I can no longer torture myself. I need to make a change. It’s time to finally say goodbye to my mess, forever.