clutter clutter everywhere

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Turns Out I Have a Few More Random Topics in My System

One of my worst habits is picking up my phone when I wake up in the wee hours of the morning. Last night, I opened up my email to see a 30% off offer from Athleta, which is irresistible because I love their athleisure. (I still don’t know if it’s pronounced Ath-leh-tuh, like “lettuce” or Ath-LEE-tuh, like “athlete.” I want very badly for it to be the latter, but I don’t know.) I already have so many pairs of high-rise leggings, but they are so comfy… and maybe one more pair would ease the emptiness in my soul, especially in the dark green, and especially if I also get this matching sweatshirt.

Okay, I’m just kidding. My soul is full of (mainly) love and light. But I do sometimes get into that mindset of This One Specific Thing Will Fix Me.

Speaking of which, I cannot stop thinking about this sweatshirt.

image from evereve.com

I saw it in person when I was doing a little light shopping with a friend while our kids were at an event. A person in my circle happened to be in the same store and was chatting with us while I perused the clothing. When I held up this sweatshirt and said, mostly joking, “I think I need an après ski sweatshirt,” she said, “No, no one needs that.” in what I can only call a Tone of Intense Derision. DO I need this sweatshirt? No, I most certainly do not. And yet my reaction to her comment was one of visceral opposition and defiance. I managed to tamp it down in the moment – again, I do not need this sweatshirt – but I still want the sweatshirt, and more so after I was scolded about it. It’s probably not financially wise to buy things out of spite, though.

You know what is the opposite of spiteful? Holiday cards. How about that masterful segue, huh??? I have said it many times but holiday cards are my favorite thing about the season. I would forego all gifts in a hot second, but I would never want to give up exchanging holiday cards.

It is quite difficult to get a photo of my cards while still keeping everyone’s faces anonymous. So you get to look at this adorable Christmas dogs card while kind of getting a *feel* for the cards on my wall.

This year, there seem to be far fewer cards on my wall than in years past, when they have wrapped around the entire perimeter of the kitchen. This is slightly concerning. Obviously my main worry is that I have been blacklisted from people’s holiday card lists, for reasons unbeknownst to me. When the more likely scenario is that a) cards are expensive and b) stamps are HELLA expensive and c) Thanksgiving was late this year, so I think some people are late in sending out their cards. I only just got my last few cards into the mail yesterday, so I clearly don’t have a leg to stand on. More cards will arrive, and I will leave them up until my husband gets annoyed enough by their presence to badger me into taking them down.

His big concern with my tendency to stick cards on the walls is that the sticky tack I use won’t come off. I have always pooh poohed that fear because it always comes off. But… last year I may have left the cards up a wee bit too long… and some of the sticky tack may have pulled off a wee bit of paint. Whoopsie. This year I am using a different brand, one that is also nearer the grey of our paint.

If you were concerned that my husband’s stocking was going to be woefully empty compared to everyone else’s, allow me to lay your fears to rest. Last night, we went to Barnes & Noble on our date night, as we do, and he spent a long time examining this book. He doesn’t usually read books in print, because of limited time, but he was seriously considering this one. It has an intriguing premise, and it’s smallish (just over 200 pages) and it has a visual element that is unusual and appealing. He looked it up on Goodreads and told me that the author’s previous book was more highly rated, but, alas, not available in the store. So during my middle-of-the-night non-sleeping, I ordered the previous book for him, along with a book of dad jokes (he’d also spent quite a lot of time lingering over a dad jokes calendar, and he loves telling dad jokes, and this book can be delivered before Christmas so it was an easy add-on). Now I am REALLY DONE BUYING THINGS.

image from amazon.com
image from amazon.com

While a lot of people, I expect, will spend this weekend baking wonderful treats and going to holiday parties, I am planning to spend my weekend TIDYING. The Christmas decor, which I love, is already beginning to close in on me. There’s the tree, which takes up space, and the necessity of moving one of the armchairs into the piano room, which makes that room crowded (there’s STILL an old couch in there as well) (also we got a concrete coffee table for the sunroom and that’s in the piano room too). Plus there is detritus on every surface – like a tin of peppermints from someone at my husband’s office, and the replacement Hanukkah pajamas I mentioned in my last post, still in their bag, and a plate of Christmas cookies, and some gift receipts, and a winter-themed tie someone gave my husband, and the two holiday letters I received from friends that I have read but am not ready to discard yet – in addition to the normal random assortment of glasses and water bottles and cat fur and tweenager flotsam and mail. Of course, there are also BOXES EVERYWHERE (the instant I break down a box and put it into the recycling bin, another box appears) because the cat loves boxes, and he also loves the brown packing paper that comes in the boxes (his version of “These Are a Few of My Favorite Things” would just be “brown paper packages, brown paper packages, brown paper packages” on repeat), and he loves to leap on the packing paper and tear it with his teeth and leave little crumbs of paper everywhere.

The Instagram algorithm, intuiting my Christmas claustrophobia, served me a video of an advice vlogger answering someone’s question about Christmas with her mother-in-law. The gist was that the writer-inner’s mother-in-law had decreed that Christmas was over at noon on Christmas Day, and so promptly at noon she started putting away all the Christmas décor, and insisted the writer-inner help. It took them five hours to put away all the ornaments and lights and the tree, and the writer-inner was upset that THAT was how she’d spent her first Christmas with her new husband and his family. She was anticipating the same thing this year, and wanted help from the advice giver.

Oh, how deeply do I empathize with the mother-in-law! I, too, reach a point at which I am simply Done with Christmas, and when I get there, I want it all to be whisked away immediately. This is one of the reasons that I refuse to decorate for Christmas before December 1. I want to enjoy the decorations, not feel stifled by them. I do typically leave them up until at least New Year’s Day, though. Even if I’m gritting my teeth by the end.

By the way, the advice given was a) see if you can change the holiday arrangement so that you spend Christmas Eve with the in-laws and Christmas Day with your family, rather than swapping every-other-Christmas Day with each family and, if that’s a no-go, b) simply agree that Christmas ends at noon on Christmas Day, and depart the in-laws’ house at that time. I don’t know about how this would go over with your family, but I just cannot imagine doing either of these things with my family of origin or my in-laws. Our families don’t even swap Christmases that often! But if we did, the swap would need to be Exactly Even. And I also cannot imagine simply opting out of what sounds like a family tradition of putting Christmas away, even if it SUCKED. But then again, I am not always the greatest at setting boundaries so maybe the advice giver has it right.

Anyway, I am going to spend this weekend tidying as much as I possibly can (GOODBYE, latest crop of boxes!), and doing laundry, and giving myself a clean-if-cluttered slate from which to begin two weeks of family togetherness.

I am also going to try out a new hair crème, which I discovered after Instagram presumed (rightly!) that I would be interested in something called “glass hair.” None of my efforts at improving my skin with expensive products have worked, but surely I can have the hair of my dreams if I just buy This One Specific Hair Crème. (I had a gift card.)

image from amazon.com
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What Are We Doing About the Mess?

When it comes to a big, multi-room tidy, I have a strategy, which I will pass on to you in hopes that it works just as well on your children (I have not tried it on my spouse, so no promises there). My strategy is setting up a Power Hour. Carla LOVES a challenge, especially if there’s the potential of besting me. And it makes cleaning into a game, and games are fun.

What I do is I get out a big colorful sheet of construction paper. At the top I write Power Hour! in big cheerful letters. Beneath, on one side, I write out a list of things I need Carla to do (make her bed, pick up stuffed animals, tidy the living room, put her socks and underpants away, etc.) and put little boxes for checkmarks next to them… and on the other side, I write out a list of things I need to do (unload dishwasher, clean toilets, vacuum stairs, etc.) and put boxes with checkmarks next to them. I have found that it helps if my list is longer than Carla’s, because she likes to have an obvious advantage. (To her, it is not obvious that “washing the floor” is much, much more time consuming than “picking up the crayons scattered all over the counter.”) Then I masking tape the list to the kitchen wall, masking tape a marker to the wall as well, and set a one-hour timer. Then we RACE to complete as many of our tasks as possible in the allotted time, checking off each task as we complete it. This is Carla’s favorite part, I think – making a checkmark on the page, while loudly proclaiming, “Checking off another one!” – and taping the marker to the wall makes it extra fun for her for some reason.

Anyway, I haven’t tried a Power Hour! lately, but I will do so today because it desperately needs doing. (It’s my normal Day Before the Cleaner Arrives technique, and it’s worked well for many months.) (By the way, being surrounded by mess has been making me feel incredibly extra wistful and thankful for our housecleaner, and I am writing her “paid leave” checks with gratitude and hope that one day she will be able to clean for us again because I miss her SO VERY MUCH OMG.)

The Power Hour! is a good strategy for the type of clutter that accumulates over time, between housecleaning appointments for instance. But I am struggling more, lately, with the HUGE VOLUME of day-to-day messiness. Everything is so much more messy than it was prior to self-isolation. Don’t get me wrong — the tendency of a child to start one project, abandon it, and begin another project while the first is strewn about a different room is, shall we say, a familiar concept. As is the concept of piles gradually accruing on every possible surface. But it turns out that my little whirlwind can make SO MANY MORE messes when she is at home for an additional 35 hours a week. Plus, I am guessing I do a lot more of-the-moment tidying when I am not staring despondently at the news 400 hours a day.

I think the utter relentlessness of the mess is what has begun wearing on me. It was simple enough at the beginning, to breezily say things along the lines of, “Of course it’s going to be messier than usual around here! You have double the people at home all day and one of them is a tornado, so mess is inevitable! But you can live with a little mess!” And this is true. I never claimed to be The World’s Tidiest Person, not by a long shot. But it turns out that a little messiness, while endurable for the short term, over time begins to feel like NOTHING IS EVER CLEAN. And, after a few days of enduing “a little mess,” the mess balloons into a LOT of messiness and then it begins feeling like I am living in squalor and there is no point in anything anymore because we are drowning in a sea of clutter. I am already walking around in a constant state of irritation/distress/anxiety and the added mess is NOT HELPING.

So I am starting to lose it, messwise. I need a new system. Otherwise I may as well lie down on the living room floor and be layered over with magnatiles and board games and construction paper and stuffed animals and remnants of pillow forts and Barbie shoes.

I had to have The Talk with my husband last night that I need more help with the housework… But man, I feel guilty about that. He is working all day, and putting his health at risk to help other people, and he is exhausted and anxious all the time, so I WANT to be able to take the pressure off at home. But also I am here ALL DAY EVERY DAY, doing nearly all the childcare and housework and meal planning/preparation, with maybe five minutes to myself at a time and… it sucks.

For those of you who have multiple children in your care all day every day… for those of you who have multiple children AND spouses who are now ALL at home with you nonstop… for those of you who are working from home WHILE your children and/or spouses are at home with you… well, you have my deepest, most sincere sympathy and compassion. My one cheering thought is that we are ALL dealing with this right now, with our own varying levels of tolerance and manageability. Additional people in our spaces, additional maneuvering required, new levels of irritation and stress, new strategizing and planning and letting things go.

I asked a fellow parent what she was doing to keep the mess down, and she said she was trying to clean a bit every day. Well. Yes. As am I. This is a tried-and-true strategy. Every single day, I do the dishes and wipe the counters and straighten and try to get Carla to move things off Obvious Surfaces. Every single day, I try to do at least one Other Thing — a load of laundry, moving all the collected water glasses from my husband’s bedside table to the sink, moving a bundle of precious artwork from the overcrowded craft cupboard to the trash. But it’s NOT ENOUGH. The mess is a rising tide and our house is a leaky boat.

If you, too, are just trying to clean a bit every day, what does that MEAN? Do you have a checklist? Do you have a rotation of Big Items? How are you enlisting the other members of your household? If you have young children, how are you helping them get into the habit of cleaning up after themselves? I am TRYING, believe me, but a) I don’t have the energy/patience to supervise all the cleaning that needs to be done and b) it feels like just one more source of potential tension between me and Carla when we are already getting on each other’s nerves and c) sometimes the ONLY WAY I can get a few minutes to myself is to ignore what is certainly a HUGE mess in the making.

So. What are YOU doing to Keep the Clutter at Bay?