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dirty little secrets
Dec. 28th, 2012 01:07 pmHere I am.
It may be Desmond's quilt that finally saves this house. Before X-mas, I cleaned up the living room. It's still cluttered (and it always will be) but the carpet is clear. I needed the space to lay out the quilt, to plan and play with pattern and color.
lol...our decorating theme is "Thrift Store"; either we actually got it there, or things look like they could be found at the local Salvation Army.
Today, I was thinking to start sewing the quilt background blocks together, but my sewing machine is on the kitchen table, and I needed to clean that off first. Instead of just the table, I spent over three hours cleaning in the kitchen (which I know, because I had the DVD of Les Miserables 25th Anniversary Concert playing in the background and I worked through the entire performance and then some.)
The floor is clear (but not yet scrubbed clean). But the counters and stove top are; actually, there is a lovely pink marble tile on the counters I never really appreciated before. Sigh. Got started with it, but it probably will take another session to get the cabinets organized. We do not need THREE (plus) sets of dishes and cookware. There's B's stuff; there's his mother's (everyday and good sets), and there's mine. We need to pare things down, and I'm going to be ruthless with tossing most of the gazillion coffee mugs and tupperware containers.
If you've missed it; I am slob and B is a hoarder. My sister and daughter were appalled when they saw the way he (we) live. Hannah said, "You know, you'll always have to visit us; I can't bring Desmond here."
A while ago, I had started on cleaning the dining room, and had made good progress there but was stymied by the need to have B go through some things and move them elsewhere. At that time, I had said how I wanted "a craft room for Christmas". NO, didn't happen, and when I did clean the living room, a lot of stuff went back into the dining room and so, eventually, I'll have to start from scratch there.
A post about cleaning. How trivial! No, it's not.
I thought I had ruined B's x-mas, when I was cleaning the day before, and he got very emotionally upset. No, not with/at me, but the situation. My cleaning was triggering some major anxiety for him. He was raised an army brat, and moved multiple times from when he was born until age 16; he has too many memories of his mother packing and throwing out his toys and belongings. Then, once his folks settled in Huntsville and got this house, his mom was a super neat-freak (they didn't even ever use the living room because "that was for company" and the furniture was covered in plastic.) Anyway , you can begin to see where his baggage came from. I don't want to cause him pain or upset him; I don't want to change him, but I do want to change the house.
As I said, I'll admit I'm very messy too, And in some ways it is easier to live with the dirt than to deal with it. Early on, accepting it was also a way to show I accepted B. But, too much clutter and letting it go too long tends to makes me depressed. it took me most of a year of living with B. to get to that point, but I did. My own neurosis and garbage/baggage. Two months or so ago, I got my antidepressant meds changed up, and it has made a real difference in my mood and in my productivity; that's also when I started with any real cleaning.
B and I have talked about it (obviously, it's come up from time to time) and we're working on things. Trying to understand and communicate with one another. We need to talk more (but sometime when I don't look like the angel of death swooping down with a trash bag in my hand) .
Ain't life weird and complicated?
It may be Desmond's quilt that finally saves this house. Before X-mas, I cleaned up the living room. It's still cluttered (and it always will be) but the carpet is clear. I needed the space to lay out the quilt, to plan and play with pattern and color.
lol...our decorating theme is "Thrift Store"; either we actually got it there, or things look like they could be found at the local Salvation Army.
Today, I was thinking to start sewing the quilt background blocks together, but my sewing machine is on the kitchen table, and I needed to clean that off first. Instead of just the table, I spent over three hours cleaning in the kitchen (which I know, because I had the DVD of Les Miserables 25th Anniversary Concert playing in the background and I worked through the entire performance and then some.)
The floor is clear (but not yet scrubbed clean). But the counters and stove top are; actually, there is a lovely pink marble tile on the counters I never really appreciated before. Sigh. Got started with it, but it probably will take another session to get the cabinets organized. We do not need THREE (plus) sets of dishes and cookware. There's B's stuff; there's his mother's (everyday and good sets), and there's mine. We need to pare things down, and I'm going to be ruthless with tossing most of the gazillion coffee mugs and tupperware containers.
If you've missed it; I am slob and B is a hoarder. My sister and daughter were appalled when they saw the way he (we) live. Hannah said, "You know, you'll always have to visit us; I can't bring Desmond here."
A while ago, I had started on cleaning the dining room, and had made good progress there but was stymied by the need to have B go through some things and move them elsewhere. At that time, I had said how I wanted "a craft room for Christmas". NO, didn't happen, and when I did clean the living room, a lot of stuff went back into the dining room and so, eventually, I'll have to start from scratch there.
A post about cleaning. How trivial! No, it's not.
I thought I had ruined B's x-mas, when I was cleaning the day before, and he got very emotionally upset. No, not with/at me, but the situation. My cleaning was triggering some major anxiety for him. He was raised an army brat, and moved multiple times from when he was born until age 16; he has too many memories of his mother packing and throwing out his toys and belongings. Then, once his folks settled in Huntsville and got this house, his mom was a super neat-freak (they didn't even ever use the living room because "that was for company" and the furniture was covered in plastic.) Anyway , you can begin to see where his baggage came from. I don't want to cause him pain or upset him; I don't want to change him, but I do want to change the house.
As I said, I'll admit I'm very messy too, And in some ways it is easier to live with the dirt than to deal with it. Early on, accepting it was also a way to show I accepted B. But, too much clutter and letting it go too long tends to makes me depressed. it took me most of a year of living with B. to get to that point, but I did. My own neurosis and garbage/baggage. Two months or so ago, I got my antidepressant meds changed up, and it has made a real difference in my mood and in my productivity; that's also when I started with any real cleaning.
B and I have talked about it (obviously, it's come up from time to time) and we're working on things. Trying to understand and communicate with one another. We need to talk more (but sometime when I don't look like the angel of death swooping down with a trash bag in my hand) .
Ain't life weird and complicated?
