The power of a single day.

What is it about Christmas being officially over that suddenly all my decorations seem cluttered and ridiculous? Literally, I wake up on the 26th of December and I can't take any Christmassy things anymore. It might be the lingering messes of paper and boxes that can't be dealt with until garbage day. It could be the sudden influx of new possessions that need a place to live. Or is it the bulging fridge of leftovers and piles of clean/dirty dishes that weren't all dealt with? Whatever it is, I can't function normally until everything is cleaned up.

I had been slowly, ever so slowly, cleaning...organizing...finding homes for things. Unfortunately, keeping up with dishes, laundry and the like, I found myself in a situation similar to only paying the minimum amount on a credit card. The small effort I made was only keeping the larger problem from growing. No progress was being made on the mess as a whole.

How I tend to live is like this: I keep things fairly well taken care of, something happens, usually some big, exhausting event (like Christmas!), and I just drift by until the house gets so bad I am jolted out of my complacency. Then, watch out!, it's frenetic cleaning time.

This is exactly what happened the other night. I couldn't take it anymore. I took down all the decorations, drug the tree outside, took all the recycling out, cleaned, dusted and swept the whole living area, put the decorations back into "the cubby," pulled out the box of "general decorations," and made my house normal again. It only took me about 4 1/2 hours but it was worth it. From the time the kids went to bed, I was a crazy cleaning lady. When the kids woke up it was such a drastic change that even they commented on how nice the house looked.

That's bad.

Oh well, at least I'm on this side of it. Everything has its place and I'm all caught up...at least until the next big thing.