Speriment

[radegund]

It turns out, right, that living in squalor is really not where I want to be.

But all our housekeeping mechanisms broke down in the onslaught of 2009 (the construction of the south wing) and the early part of 2010 (my vitamin B12 deficiency), and they're only just beginning to come back.

I still feel at sea. So I'm going to take a leaf out of ailbhe's

Comments

[biascut]

Realising you don't want to live in squalor is a HUGE first step, I think - when you realise that you're tidying and cleaning because you want to live in a house which is tidy and clean, rather than because there is some external authority which will Disapprove of you if you don't. It doesn't make it entirely fun and games, but it helps a lot.

Alas, my top tip for living somewhere tidy and clean is to share it with another adult who also likes living somewhere tidy and clean, and does at least 50% of the work required to keep it that way. Not so much of an option for you!

We generally say that our division of labour is that Glitz is tidy and I am clean. I get frustrated when I can see dust and much in corners, and usually crack eveyr fortnight and get the hoover out, wipe window sills and things and clean the bathroom. She's much better at emptying the laundry than me, and also sees piles of washing up as a challenge rather than a a chore. We both like going through piles of letters and chucking everything except the stuff that really needs keeping in teh recycling, and then taking the stuff that is for keeping up to the filing cabinet. I think neither of us leaves that kind of thing more than two or three days.

Both of us really see mess as stuff we don't want to live with, though. I don't like sorting out piles of laundry, but seeing it depresses me more than doing it, so I just get on with it.

ETA: oh, other thing that makes a huge difference for me (us, I think) is knowing that we both appreciate the other cleaning. If I do the bathroom, I am half thinking "hooray! I am making a clean bathroom for Helen!" And I know she'll notice the bathroom and come and say, "You cleaned the bathroom! Thank you so much!" And vice versa. We don't have any formal division of labour, which means that we both see everything that needs doing as "my" job, and when the other person does something, we feel genuinely grateful because that's one less job to do.